A Ninja's Parents
by Racke
Summary: They didn't talk about her sister, usually. And they never talked about where her parents had been born. But her family had always had a thing for swords. WARNING: Character death.
1. Chapter 1

XXX

 **Story** : [A Ninja's Parents] (expanded)

 **Summary** : They didn't talk about her sister, usually. And they never talked about where her parents had been born. But her family had always had a thing for swords. WARNING: Character death.

 **Crossover** : (Naruto) / (Sword Art Online)

 **Genre** : Family, Drama, Adventure

XXX

Sakura had always known that she'd had an older sister. That once upon a time, before she was born, her parents had had a different daughter. She'd seen a few pictures, and it was obvious that her sister had taken after their father, even as she herself took after their mother.

At least in looks. Mom always insisted that Sakura had inherited her father's smarts, and when she could convince them to talk about her sister, they both agreed that Yui had always taken after mom in sheer stubbornness.

She wished that she could've met her, could've talked to her, could've asked her for advice. But Yui had died before she was even born. She didn't even know if her mom had been pregnant with her yet when she died, or if they'd only decided to have a second child after they'd already lost their first.

She didn't really like thinking about it, and her parents didn't really talk about those days unless prompted. So she didn't know.

What she did know was that she'd had an older sister, once. She also knew that neither of her parents were born in Konoha or any of the other Villages, so they didn't really understand how things worked. But most people who knew them could figure out that much.

She had a suspicion that her parents might've been samurai at one point, because there were a few swords in the house and her dad would sometimes reminiscence about practicing with wooden swords with his little sister.

Ninja didn't use swords though, so she hadn't ever really seen the point in learning. She practiced a bit, but she was going to become a ninja, not a samurai. No matter how cool her parents looked when they sparred, wooden blades a blur as they danced.

She was pretty sure her parents came from rich families originally, but she wasn't entirely sure what kind. Her dad would sometimes tell – probably exaggerated – stories about how sheltered mom had been when he'd met her, and mom would smack him for calling her a princess.

Sakura was also pretty sure that her dad was actually a genius. That, despite him fumbling around and never seeming to understand ninja at all, he actually knew thousands of things that most people would never have even considered. Mom knew a lot of things too, but she mostly just seemed to enjoy listening to dad talk about whatever strange topic he'd decided to research that day.

Sometimes, Sakura wondered if everyone her parents knew were dead. A lot of them seemed to be, or maybe that was just them having cut ties for some reason. It was hard to tell, and neither of them really seemed willing to talk about it.

In the end, dead or distant, it didn't matter. Life continued as normal.

Then, finally, she graduated from the Academy.

And was sorted onto the same team as Sasuke and the loudmouth.

XXX

Hatake Kakashi wasn't entirely sure what to make of Haruno Sakura.

On the one hand, she had all the marks of a civilian-born – more book-smart than athletic – despite the general suspicion that her parents were samurai who'd eloped. On the other, she knew more than he did about some things.

Usually, it was just random trivia. Useless things that compounded into giving her a good base for building up fake identities for missions, should she ever put it to use. But the sheer diversity of it was something he couldn't quite help keeping an eye on.

He'd have to look a bit closer on her parents' files.

His other two students were a lot easier to understand in comparison. A class-clown desperate for acknowledgment, who was only now finally beginning to apply himself to the life that he'd chosen. An emotionally scarred boy, who'd latched onto the only thing he knew in order to defend himself from the horror and despair inflicted upon him by the person he'd loved so dearly.

Oh, they were both veritable minefields of problems that could cost them a mission or their lives. But at least Kakashi knew what their problems _were_ , if not how to deal with them.

Sakura though? She was clever, very well educated, surprisingly fit for a civilian-born, definitely crushing on Sasuke, definitely not appreciative of Naruto's advances, and with an inclination towards thoughtful silences.

She also seemed very practiced at avoiding topics such as family-members. Almost instinctively well-practiced, actually.

Kakashi sighed. He should probably look into that as well.

What a troublesome student he had.

XXX

Coinciding with the theory of them eloping, there was no country of origin listed for either of them, or at least no country that they actually had been born into. They had a citizenship in one of the minor countries that was friendly with Konoha, but before that their records were perfectly blank.

Of course there was the possibility that they were long-term infiltrators, but apparently they'd been taken off that list after some check-ups into their personality-types and behavior-patterns. Security-wise, they were low-priority as civilians, and they hadn't shown any inclinations towards ninja-like behavior, so they'd been allowed to stay and no more had been said about it.

A more thorough check into their family-register however explained why Sakura was so used to avoiding bringing up family-members in conversations.

A daughter had been listed as deceased before they ever arrived in Konoha, the place where Sakura was later born. The ages were a little bit odd, but it might help explain why they'd decided to elope in the first place.

Their first daughter would've been old enough to go to the Academy by the time of her death, and considering their own ages in relation to that-... well, they must've caused quite the scandal when the pregnancy was discovered. Especially so if there was any weight to the rumor that the mother came from a wealthy family. Possibly a scandal big enough that someone might decide to forcefully remove her from the family-tree, depending on the family.

And then there were two runaways, without a clan, without connections, and with a child to feed. Yes, that sounded harsh. But they'd apparently made a good show at it, until their daughter had died.

Cause of death wasn't listed so Kakashi couldn't be entirely sure, but there was generally only one reason that a family would uproot themselves in order to move into a Village. Fear.

Whether the fear was bandits, or a lack of proper medical care, or ninja. Happy families didn't suddenly up and leave, not that they would've been very likely to have been 'happy' in the wake of their daughter's death.

So they'd moved into the Village, hoping to save Sakura from whatever fate had befallen her older sister. And then they'd settled in and been a happy family, albeit one that didn't really understand the ninja they lived next to, or the profession that their daughter had decided to pick up.

Interestingly enough, it seemed as if both parents still practiced swordsmanship when they could find the time. A way to keep healthy, a way to protect, or simply a habit. It was noteworthy, mostly because it probably helped to explain why Sakura's fitness was above average for a civilian-born, but also because it likely meant that there would come a time when she'd try using a sword as a ninja.

Should the time come, he should probably have something picked out for her as a 'gift' in order to keep her from picking up something unsuited for their lifestyle. Otherwise her parents might saddle her with something purely samurai-friendly instead, and then she'd probably get herself killed.

Kakashi briefly considered having a face-to-face talk with her parents, but dismissed it.

It wouldn't do to get overly attached.

XXX

Sakura looked curiously at the sword. It was good quality and resembled her mother's preferred type, but it looked sturdier than the thin rapier that her mother favored.

"Umm, thank you, sensei?" She tried, still a bit confused as to why he'd bought her a sword.

Kakashi smiled at her over Naruto's head, not letting go of the blond – who'd taken great and violent offense to not also receiving a gift from their teacher – despite him slowly turning blue. "You're welcome, Sakura-kun."

Sakura made a face, a little bit annoyed at the man for completely missing the point of her hesitance. "Is there a reason for this particular type?" She tried.

Kakashi hummed noncommittally. "It's good in enclosed spaces, and you're a Konoha-nin."

Naruto finally managed to use a Kawarimi to get himself away from slowly suffocating in Kakashi's grip. "What's being a Konoha-nin got to do with it, sensei?!"

Kakashi tilted his head. "The land of Fire is a forest." He said bluntly, before realizing that Naruto still didn't seem to get it. "For example, Water consists mostly of islands, lakes, and rivers. So their ninja fight on open water or beaches more often than not. In that kind of situation, a greater reach is an advantage, which is part of why their Seven Swordsmen were so feared. In a forest on the other hand, a longer weapon would just get caught on tree-branches and get its wielder killed." He motioned towards Sakura's new sword. "Which is why Sakura-kun here gets a sword most suited for thrusting."

Well, that did clear up the reason behind this particular sword being given to her, but it still didn't explain why Kakashi had given her a new sword in the first place.

She didn't figure out that part until she returned home and her dad paused with a worried frown before suddenly nodding in resignation.

She was a ninja, an adult, someone who would walk into battle some day soon. She needed a weapon for it, and a sword was what she had trained with. And Kakashi-sensei knew how to fight like a ninja, and which weapons would help them stay alive, better than her parents did.

A purely practical gift, designed to keep her alive.

She'd be lying if the prospect didn't scare her a little bit. That the reminder of the dangers involved with being a ninja didn't send a shiver of trepidation down her spine. But even so, it was a gift that she was happy to receive.

XXX

Their first C-ranked mission wasn't anywhere near as glamorous as Naruto had hoped, that much was obvious. Still, escorting an old man across the country was probably better than weeding gardens every day for the rest of the week.

It was all about seeing the silver lining.

Sakura continued to think like that until they got jumped by two chunin and the old man admitted that there was a lot more to their mission than he'd originally told them. Then she started to worry.

She was just a genin, even if Sasuke was really strong and Naruto could take a beating with the best of them. Even if Kakashi-sensei was unimaginably strong, being forced to rely on others for her own safety didn't exactly leave her feeling calm and relaxed.

So when Naruto started to jump at shadows and attack the innocent – and adorable – wildlife, Sakura was high-strung enough to react to their teacher's order before she even registered what it was.

Which was why she was face-down in the dirt when a massive sword flew over their heads.

Then their real troubles started.

XXX

Kakashi's reliability in the eyes of his students had been somewhat dented when he'd originally decided to play dead for a bit at the start of the mission. It wasn't exactly improved by any marginal that, despite his impressive stunt of playing 'I know that you know but do you know that I know that you know' with the enemy ninja and water-clones, it resulted in him slowly drowning within a water-prison.

Sure, they'd probably be a lot worse off than Kakashi, seeing as how they were genin, and the memory of him kicking their asses during the Bell Test was still fairly vivid-... But it really wasn't a good show on Kakashi's part.

Their problem could roughly be translated into 'without Kakashi we'll die' and 'saving Kakashi _might_ help our odds of survival'. It wasn't exactly reassuring, but it was the best they had.

Zabuza might try to convince them that he'd let them go if they didn't interfere with him killing off Tazuna – and Kakashi, but their teacher had a bounty on his head, so that he would refuse to give that up was hardly a surprise – but in the end it was an obvious lie. He had nothing to gain from letting them run free, and he'd already admitted to being a murderous psychopath who'd killed his former classmates for 'fun'.

That Zabuza would let them go without putting a sword through their vital organs as they fled was far too optimistic to be sane.

No, if they tried to run away he'd just kill them. And if they fought he'd probably kill them too, but at least he probably wouldn't make a sport of hunting them down and toying with them before going for the kill.

Their only real option was to free Kakashi-sensei from the water-prison. But at the same time, they couldn't count on that somehow being enough to save them. Kakashi had lost once already, and it probably wouldn't be turning out much better on his second try.

Thus, they needed a plan to free Kakashi, and then use Kakashi being freed to somehow help their sensei to ambush Zabuza even further.

At their disposal they had Naruto who had a semi-infinite supply of clones, and the ability to turn into pretty much anything through his henge. They also had Sasuke and his fire-jutsu and chunin-level taijutsu. And finally they had Sakura and her sword.

Sasuke's fire wouldn't do much of anything in the current environment, but he was good at throwing things, and Naruto was good at transforming into things, so it might be possible to have the two of them provide an endless barrage of projectiles. It wouldn't be enough to bring a jounin down, especially one who wasn't surprised by it, but it would put them on edge.

Sakura was pretty sure she could block one of Zabuza's cuts. Not well, and not without risk, but her sword was designed for taking hits and she had some experience in how to pull it off.

So-... First a trap, something to put Zabuza on his guard and with luck free Kakashi; then a sustained barrage of projectiles to try and hedge him further into a corner; then Sakura would disable his sword for a single moment; then Kakashi would go in and deliver the final hit.

It wasn't an overly complex plan, but it relied on Kakashi instinctively going for the opening when it appeared, and for Sakura not to get hit by the projectiles, and for Kakashi to be anywhere nearby when an opening actually appeared in Zabuza's guard.

A lot of variables, a lot of things that could go wrong. But they didn't really have a lot of choice. At this point, it was do or die.

XXX

Kakashi was impressed when Naruto and Sasuke came together to force Zabuza to break the water-prison. He was a tiny little bit worried however when they didn't stop there.

Kunai, shuriken, windmill-shuriken, ninja-wire, more kunai, and everywhere he looked puffs of smoke and bright flashes of orange. Sasuke had turned Naruto into a walking arsenal, and was seemingly determined to empty it completely with all due haste.

Then, in the middle of all the distractions, Zabuza dodged away from Kakashi before he could counterattack after blocking the missing-nin's attempt at returning fire with Sasuke's windmill-shuriken. Kakashi followed after, and Zabuza drew his sword.

Then the sword was suddenly off at an angle, deflected by-...

"Switch!" Sakura's voice rang clear, and she rolled away from where she'd left Zabuza suddenly wide open.

Kakashi didn't really have time to blink before his instincts took over. And then Zabuza had a kunai lodged in his neck, aimed upwards into his brain.

It was over in an instant, three genin coming together to bring down an A-class missing-nin, only relying on Kakashi's interference to land that final blow.

If he'd been impressed before, he was now vaguely suspicious that his genin-team was secretly an undercover ANBU-team with several years of field-experience. They'd managed to leave 'impressive' in the dust somewhere in the span of a few seconds.

Now-... Now he was... proud. Yes, that's what that feeling was, wasn't it? Pride.

They'd come a long way from when he'd first met them on that rooftop.

Then his moment of self-reflection was rudely interrupted by a hunting-nin from Kiri dropping out of the trees to check on Zabuza's body.

It took him about half-a-second to notice the flinching tremble in the hunting-nin once they realized that Zabuza was well and truly dead. Then everyone was back to fighting, as with a keening wail, the hunting-nin turned on them with murderous intent.

Because of course Zabuza had had a partner.

Heavens forbid that Kakashi's life would ever be _easy_.

XXX

If Zabuza had been deceit and powerful attacks, the man's partner was speed and endless attacks.

The hunting-nin seemed to aim most of his attacks towards Sakura and Kakashi, which was a bit of a relief seeing as how at least they didn't need to really think about Tazuna at all. However, it also meant that Sakura spent all of her time trying desperately to deflect the countless senbon raining down on her from seemingly every angle at once.

That left Sasuke and Naruto to help Kakashi in attacking. And neither of the genin could even really scratch the missing-nin's ice-mirrors. Kakashi could, but after he'd used that lightning-punch of his once, he'd come to the conclusion that he couldn't damage enough mirrors for it to be worth it. He couldn't break them faster than they could be replaced.

They were on the defensive, trying to catch the hunting-nin as he jumped between the mirrors, and at the same time distracting him from focusing all of his lethal effort towards Sakura. A distraction that was very much necessary, considering how the hunting-nin was seemingly determined to blame her for Zabuza's death.

Maybe it was because she'd technically fought the man sword-to-sword, or maybe it was because she'd been the final key to opening a path for Kakashi, or maybe it was simply because she was a genin and the hunting-nin was planning on aiming all of his efforts on Kakashi the moment she went down.

Regardless of the reasons behind it, it left Sakura nearly covering behind her teammates at times, trying to keep away from the hunting-nin's line of sight.

And then Kakashi was in front of her, and the hunting-nin was caught.

There was a crack, like dry twigs breaking.

The hunting-nin fell to the ground, throat a ragged wound and blood spilling everywhere.

Kakashi slumped, and Sakura nearly dropped her sword trying to catch the man as he nearly collapsed on top of her.

"Poison." A brief hiss between his teeth. "Accumulating poison. Zabuza started it." His breath hitched worryingly. "I hate poison."

Then he passed out.

XXX

There wasn't really anything they could do about poison other than to send for the closest thing Wave had a to a doctor. Ignoring that their mission was to get Tazuna home, the man's house was actually the best place to go to, seeing as how they couldn't really carry Kakashi around indefinitely and the fact that Wave didn't really have a functional clinic. Konoha was simply too far away to try and run back.

Their best option was to go to Tazuna's home, send someone to go fetch the 'doctor', and try to keep Kakashi from dying before they arrived.

Considering how none of them had any medical training beyond wrapping bandages, that last step was very much a worrying one. And it wasn't made any better by the dawning realization that the doctor probably wouldn't be arriving until a bit before dawn the next day.

There really wasn't much they could do other than tuck Kakashi in to the best of their abilities, and then take turns to sit watch over him. A task which wasn't made any easier by their own exhaustion.

Naruto still fidgeted in a way that proved that had the circumstances been better, he might've been bouncing off the walls; but he was alone in that. Sakura was bruised and battered and the only reason she was taking care of her sword instead of passing out in a corner somewhere was because her parents had always been very insistent with her learning how to maintain her own equipment. And Sasuke was slowly being bandaged-up by Tazuna's daughter, Tsunami.

Hell, the fact that Sasuke wasn't even putting up a fuss about being cared for by a civilian kind of went to show how bone-weary he was by now. He hadn't even bothered with token protests, and if it wasn't because he was halfway to falling asleep whenever Tsunami didn't jostle his injuries for a few seconds, then Sakura might've been honestly worried.

They'd checked everyone for poison, but the only one that had seemingly been targeted by it had been Kakashi. Or else he was the only one who'd run their chakra low enough – and been hit enough times – for it to be noticeable. Either way, they were in the clear, and Kakashi very much wasn't.

It was a long and restless night.

XXX

"He'll be lucky to last until noon."

Naruto made a choked sound. "But you're a doctor! You can fix him, right?!"

The man glanced his way, but shook his head. "I'm a doctor, not a medic-nin. I can't perform miracles." He sighed. "Poisons are a nasty business. Even if I knew what it is that's been used, it could take me days or even weeks to make an antidote for it, depending on how common it is. And this doesn't look the least bit familiar."

Sasuke shifted in his seat, eyes narrowed, even as Naruto kind of just slumped bonelessly. "Is there anything you _can_ do?" He asked.

The doctor made a face. "I can try to make it painless, but really I'd be better off just trying to keep him comfortable as he dies."

Sakura took a deep shuddering breath, hearing the bitter helplessness in the man's voice.

Kakashi-sensei was going to die, and there was nothing they could do about it.

Even if they'd turned around back towards Konoha immediately after their encounter with Zabuza and his partner, they wouldn't have made it in time. And that was if they hadn't collapsed on the way there from exhaustion at carrying their teacher on top of their own injuries.

Kakashi's death was as prolonged as it was inevitable. And they were going to have to watch him fade.

XXX

They were starting to worry that he wouldn't even wake up to say goodbye before he died, when their mission forced itself back into the forefront of their minds.

Gato's thugs, shouting on their doorstep about teaching Tazuna a lesson, and with some foul words towards the 'weaklings' he'd hired to help save his country.

Both Sasuke and Naruto looked furious, but it was obvious that Sasuke wasn't in any position to fight – no matter his opinion on the matter. Sakura was mostly... numb, actually. She hadn't really had time to process things, and right now she mostly just wanted to retreat in a corner until things stopped happening.

But they had a mission, and neither Sasuke nor Kakashi were in any condition to help with it. That left her as the only person available to rein in Naruto before he flew off the handle and bit off more than he could chew.

So she got to her feet, and pushed Sasuke down in his seat with a hand on his shoulder. He glared up at her and she glanced meaningfully towards the form of their unconscious teacher. "Keep sensei safe."

Sasuke's glare didn't soften, exactly, but it lost a bit of its feral edge and he stopped struggling.

A deep breath, and then she followed Naruto through the door as he rushed into what was most likely going to be an ambush of some sort.

Naruto could handle a few bandits, sure. Any genin worth their salt could do at least that much. But Naruto was about as strategically aware as a brick – which sometimes made him very useful because of the sheer madness that were his 'plans' – so it wasn't really that unlikely that he'd end up at a disadvantage.

And they really couldn't afford losing another fighter, especially if Gato was planning on continuing sending mercenaries and missing-nin their way. The bastard had some deep pockets.

In hindsight, they really should've expected Gato having someone keeping an eye on the only doctor in Wave. Not that there was much they could've done about it, even if they'd thought of it. Just another thing to remember in the future.

XXX

Sakura didn't really register that she'd killed someone until five men were already down on the ground, crimson spreading like gooey puddles around her thrown kunai.

Not that she could really afford to stop and think about that any further than acknowledging that her response to someone trying to shoot her with a crossbow had at least discouraged them somewhat from trying it.

An unwashed person leapt at her with a sword, so she deflected it and slid her own sword through their neck. A brief pause to flick the sword free from the person desperately clutching their throat with both hands, Sakura leaned out of reach of another thug's grasping hand and delivered a kick to the side of their knee. The knee bent sideways with a crack, and then she flicked her sword along his stomach as she spun past him.

Not quite dead, and technically still a potential risk, but it was a fatal injury and he was in no shape to move around so it was classified as a negligible risk to continue onwards.

Naruto was keeping them away from the house with his multitude of clones, and was tearing his way through them as if they were wheat, snarling like a cornered beast. He could handle himself. Sakura continued to aim for the places where someone tried to restore order in the enemy's ranks.

If Naruto was a hammer to smash aside all opposition, then she was a sword to cut the head of the snake. Useful, but perhaps mostly superfluous in the face of the feral ruthlessness of her teammate's rage.

Finally, she caught a glimpse of something, a type of clothing that didn't coincide with the makeshift armor of the thugs. A business-man, amidst a mob.

Sakura blinked, and then changed her direction. She didn't want to try fighting her way directly towards the business-man, that would likely remind him of the danger he was currently in and convince him to run off, but it shouldn't be a problem to work her way around and cut off the man's retreat before he really started to notice her.

Sakura stepped around a wild lunge with a pitchfork and flicked her sword along the tendons of the thug's ankles. They went down with a cry, leaving their partner's back wide open for a stab at their kidney.

Despite what people assumed, a sword was really most efficient in the concept of 'death of a thousand cuts' than the ridiculous inclination to go around cleaving people in half. All she really needed to do was hit an artery and they'd bleed to death in no time at all, and there were a great many arteries that were barely even covered in skin in the first place. Speed and precision was far more important than committing her strength to any particular strike.

Then suddenly she caught the business-man's eyes over another fallen thug. He'd spotted her, but at least he didn't actually have anywhere to run to now.

From his panicked shouting about 'pay', it was fairly easy to surmise that this was in fact Gato himself. So she didn't feel even remotely bad about the bloody smile that spread across her lips as she slipped past his guards and buried her sword in his stomach, upwards towards his lungs.

Sakura spun around another thug's attack and retaliated with an elbow to his throat.

Gato was dead, but the thugs were either unaware of this fact, or sincerely believed that it would be better to try and bring the ninja down in an upfront battle rather than flee for their lives whilst they still had them available.

In the end, it didn't matter. They'd continue fighting until the thugs stopped attacking and fled.

No matter how many of them they'd have to kill for that to ever happen.

XXX

There was a scream, the sound of metal clashing against metal, more screams, and the distant and muted sound of bodies hitting dirt; that was the sounds that Kakashi woke up to.

He was running a fever, and he couldn't feel his legs, so – considering his last conscious memory – apparently they hadn't been able to find anyone capable of removing the poison in his systems. Not that he'd really held much hope about that actually, he was pretty sure the poison had been specifically developed by Zabuza and what had likely been his apprentice.

Maybe if he'd had been on a squad with a talented medic-nin, or been nearby to Konoha when he'd been poisoned-... As it was, his only chance had been to be miraculously lucky and either stumble on Tsunade's secret hiding-space, or spontaneously develop a new immunity on the spot. Chakra had done stranger things in the past, Kakashi was sure. Though, admittedly he'd been very close to hitting chakra-exhaustion at the time, so he probably wouldn't even have access to the chakra that might've made such a thing possible.

It wasn't as if removing the poison would've been similar to removing the poison of a snake-bite. It was already inside of him, and there really wasn't anything the genin could've done about it.

There were better ways to die, but at least this would be an end to things. A chance to finally rest and meet up with all those precious people who'd gone on to the afterlife before him.

"Kakashi-sensei." A hiss of air through gritted teeth, Sasuke still managed to make it sound relieved somehow. "You're awake."

Kakashi smiled at the little brat, even if his outline looked a bit blurry. "Ah, what's happening?"

"We're at Tazuna's house, and Gato attacked. Naruto and Sakura are dealing with it." Sasuke reported. "You're dying."

Kakashi hummed an affirmative to that last statement. "There are worse ways to die, Sasuke-kun."

Sasuke frowned. "What are our orders, sensei?"

Kakashi heard his own voice echo back to him, childishly stubborn and clinging desperately to following the rules that his father had died for breaking. It was painful to hear his student walking in his footsteps like that, even if perhaps he ought to have expected it.

Sakura had been a bit of an enigma when he'd first landed himself with them, but Sasuke was probably the most scarred one of the other two. Naruto could probably have turned traitor on a dime if an enemy of Konoha had just been nice to him, but Sasuke had _lost_. After all, it was hard to lose something when you'd never had anything to call your own.

No, if anyone picked up his childhood-mantle of being a mission-focused dick, it would've been Sasuke. He just wished that he could steer him away from that path. Away from turning himself into a tool for other people to use and discard as they saw fit.

Sasuke had an ambition, didn't he? A personal goal where a 'proper' ninja-tool had none beside what was given to it. That would probably break him in the end, whether by betrayal or madness.

"Itachi was a perfect ninja." He said, ignoring the way Sasuke flinched at the name. "An emotionless tool for the sake of the Village." He took a deep shuddering breath, remembering the endless bodies. "We all saw how that ended, Sasuke-kun. Don't become a tool for your vengeance, it will only end in blood and tears."

Sasuke was gritting his teeth, and probably glaring, but it was hard to see.

Kakashi was quiet for a bit before speaking again. "A cousin of yours once told me something." Because if anyone deserved to hear that tale, it was Sasuke. "He told me that if a ninja who abandons a mission is trash, then a ninja who abandons their friends is worse than trash." He smiled up at his student. "I was probably a bit too much like you to listen to him then. But he still saved my life, more times than I can count. Your orders are to take care of the others, finish the mission to the best of your ability, and burn my corpse so that nobody can misuse Obito's eye."

Sasuke was staring at him now, eyes wide. But he nodded, and Kakashi smiled.

"Kakashi-sensei!" A new voice joined their conversation as a blur of yellow and orange and _red_ moved towards him. "You're awake!"

Kakashi hummed in agreement, suddenly overcome with the nostalgia of having Minato-sensei fretting at his bedside. "The attackers are cleared up?"

Naruto flinched, but nodded. Considering the red, someone was going to have to ease Naruto into dealing with his first kill, since Kakashi himself was dying. And Sakura's, he amended, as another shape moved through the door. She was covered in even more red than Naruto, though how much of that was actually her clothes and how much of it was blood was hard to tell with his eyes as fuzzy as they were.

"You did good, Naruto-kun, Sakura-kun." He reassured them as much as he could in what was likely to be his final moments – he doubted he'd ever regain consciousness if he fell asleep now. He glanced back towards Naruto to see him fidget despite only recently sitting down, and felt another fond smile curl his lips. "Your parents would've been proud, Naruto-kun."

The fretting attention narrowed into a sharp edge as Naruto latched onto that. "You knew my parents?" He sounded a bit terrified, emotions mixed together until it was hard to tell.

Kakashi sighed. "Yes. Once upon a time." He frowned briefly, remembering that it was very much classified information for a reason. "Not a word of that leaves this room."

His other two students nodded, but Naruto looked a bit like he was going to cry.

Kakashi sighed, understanding. Nobody ever talked about them, and he was probably as hungry for stories about them as Sasuke was hungry for having his family back. "They were good people, Naruto-kun. Some of the best I've ever met." He smiled again, perhaps a little sadly. "Your father's looks, but your mother's heart. Ask Jiraiya for more, he'll tell you when you're ready."

Naruto nodded, and yeah he was definitely crying now. Though from the way Sasuke nearly bumped his shoulder with his own, nobody was going to make fun of him for it.

Family was important on his team.

A boy who'd never heard of his parents, a boy who'd lost everything to his brother's madness, and a girl who'd never met her older sister. And then Kakashi, who'd lost everybody he loved, one at a time to the endless dredge of a ninja's life. Yes, family was important.

"Sakura-kun." He turned his attention to the last member of his team. "You're the eldest now, take care of these two trouble-makers for me, okay?"

Sakura's breath hitched, and he was pretty sure she was crying. "O-Okay, sensei. I will."

He felt a little bad at using that against her. Of using the memory of her being the youngest sibling against her. It was a cruel thing to do, but the three of them were his precious students, and they were the closest thing to a family that he had left.

Hopefully, this family would have a happier ending than his own; even if it started in tears, with three siblings bent over his cooling corpse.

XXX

Three genin returned alone to the gates of Konoha.

A mislabeled C-ranked mission had been the end of the legend of 'Sharingan Kakashi'. It was a grim reminder of the motivation behind Tsunade's attempts to place a medic-nin on every squad. Of how big of a difference that could've made.

Somehow though, Hiruzen got the feeling that the genin-team the man had left behind wouldn't simply fade away in his wake. Almost as if the shared trauma of watching him dying had stabilized the ticking time-bomb which most had been worried that Team 7 would be.

They brought with them their teacher's ashes, a completed mission, and the sword of one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist.

It was a blow to Konoha's reputation, even if Wave had apparently decided to name their bridge after the man in honor to his sacrifice for their country. But on a more immediate basis, it was a blow to Konoha's order.

Team 7 belonged under a jounin-teacher. They'd more than proven themselves worthy of that much. But due to sheer scheduling-issues there wouldn't be any appropriate jounin-teacher's available until the next batch of Academy-students graduated. And trying to split up Team 7 was very much a recipe for disaster.

Still, it wasn't as if there weren't contingencies established for the eventuality of a genin-team losing their jounin-teacher. But that was more designed as a temporary stop-gap until a new jounin-teacher proved available, and basically consisted of dumping the trio on D-ranks under some no-name's supervision and give them time to grieve.

Which in normal cases was perfectly fine, but most normal teams didn't have the Jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi and the Last Uchiha on it. People were expecting great things from at least those two, and since they'd clearly proven themselves capable of performing C-ranks, there would be a lot of pressure to get them to 'graduate' from the pointless D-ranks and start building up the reputation that Konoha lost at the death of their teacher.

Ruthless and cruel, perhaps. But such was the lot of a ninja, and Danzo had never been one to mince words. No, Hiruzen would definitely be under pressure to come up with a better option than the normal contingency.

Not to mention that he would likely be under heat from people like Iruka who'd been against Team 7 leaving on a C-ranked mission from the very beginning. The 'casual arrogance' of Kakashi refusing to end the mission – or even call for backup – despite the mislabeling, wouldn't help matters.

And that still wasn't touching upon the fact that a trio of genin were clearly grieving their teacher, or that they wouldn't be alone in their grief.

Hiruzen sighed, ignoring his own feelings on the matter, Maito Gai would likely create a scene. Possibly, he might just try and drag the student's of his 'rival' underneath his wing, regardless of the appropriateness of such an action – or their own thoughts on the matter. On the other hand, he might cause enough of a fuss in his own version of 'mourning' that Konoha would be lucky to remain standing in the aftermath. Or he might simply disappear into a bar and not come out for a week, before returning much the same as he'd gone in.

Gai could be unpredictable like that.

Hiruzen put the damage-control out of his mind before it started to give him a headache, instead focusing on what the regular contingencies would tell him to do. Turning back to his paperwork, he found that headache make a reappearance in full force.

The 'no-name' that they would've been placed under was Ebisu.

The very same Ebisu who happened to get along with Naruto much akin to a house on fire. Yes, that's exactly what a grieving genin needed. Someone in authority hanging around to be antagonized by.

Some days, he really wished he could be selfish enough to uproot himself from the mess of his position and just drown himself in the bottom of a bottle somewhere.

XXX

The silence on their way back to Konoha had been eerie.

Sasuke and Naruto had stopped fighting, and apparently neither of them were capable conversationalists when they weren't trying to beat each other into the dirt. Not that Sakura had really been expecting anything else.

For all his obnoxious clowning, Naruto could be very quiet when he wasn't trying to fight someone for the spotlight. And Sasuke had sometimes gone entire days without saying a word.

There wasn't really anything to talk about, they'd hashed out the likely results of returning without a jounin-teacher back in Wave, and nobody really wanted to risk jostling Kakashi's ashes any more than necessary.

There was a possibility that Konoha would try to split them up, and each of them would be fighting the people in charge if they tried it. There was a small chance that someone would try and promote one or more of them to chunin, but they wouldn't be able to split them up with just that. There was a likely chance that they'd end up with a new jounin-teacher, and they'd try to be courteous to them even if they were never going to be a good replacement for Kakashi-sensei. There was even a chance that Sakura's parents would try and withdraw her from being a ninja, but both of the boys had apartments of their own, and there weren't really any true legal pressures her parents could bring down on her to force the issue.

Their entrance into Konoha had been somewhat anticlimactic. They'd reported to the Hokage who'd frowned sadly and given his condolences, before telling them that a proper funeral would be held and that they were off-duty until then. Then they'd all gone their separate ways to find a decent bed to sleep in, with a promise to show up on their regular spot on the bridge the next day.

It'd been awkward telling her parents about it, about the fact that her teacher had died on a C-ranked mission and that she'd killed dozens of people. About telling them that she honestly didn't feel much about that massacre of a battle, except for the niggling annoyance that she'd never be able to wash the blood out of her clothes.

She wasn't entirely sure how her parents had been raised, but beyond the original shock of hearing about it, both of them seemed content in just hugging her. She thought that there might've been tears too, but by then she was just too exhausted to care.

The thing that stood out the most, was that as her parents hovered around her, tucking her into bed as if she was half her current age, was the heartfelt invitation to bring her teammates back for dinner someday soon.

XXX

They were both at the bridge when she arrived.

Naruto still looked... 'hollow', and Sasuke still had that thoughtful expression.

"I'm going to become a medic-nin."

Sakura blinked stupidly at the boy for a long moment. "Why?"

Sasuke shifted uncomfortably. "I'm sick of people dying in front of me."

Sakura stared at him, but nodded. He'd been the one at Kakashi's side there at the end. Naruto and herself had been out fighting, _doing things_ , and Sasuke had simply sat next to their teacher and watched him die. Perhaps that kind of thing left other types of scars.

Naruto didn't much react to hearing it, even if the brief flicker of surprise on his face meant that Sasuke had been waiting for both of them to be there before talking about it.

There was something truly disturbing about how empty Naruto seemed to be, though he hadn't really reacted much at all since Kakashi's eye slipped closed that final time. He'd seemingly cried all of his tears right then and there, and he hadn't stopped crying until the ashes had started to go cold.

Sakura made a thoughtful sound, shifting the sword on her hip. "I probably need to learn a bit of genjutsu to go with my kenjutsu, and I'm pretty sure Naruto needs to learn some more long-range ninjutsu if we're going to be trying to fight jounins again."

Naruto blinked lethargically, but nodded.

And apparently she couldn't hold a conversation with her teammates anymore, because Naruto had all but gone mute, and Sasuke only opened his mouth if he felt like he had something important to say.

The thought of that became much more uncomfortable when Sakura remembered that she was quite possibly the only person her teammates had to turn to. They were orphans, and they'd never really gotten along with each other. With the future of their team still undecided as far as the higher-ups were concerned, Sakura was quite possibly the only thing keeping them together.

Frowning, Sakura took a deep breath and grabbed onto the boys' sleeves. "Right. Mom's making dinner, and you're coming. Both of you."

Sasuke's eyes narrowed, even as Naruto's started to widen. But that just meant they weren't struggling just yet, so Sakura started to pull them along with her. "I'm pretty sure dad knows some stuff about medicine, and mom's food is the best. So no arguments allowed."

She only managed to pull them along for a few steps before the both of them fell into step next to her instead.

Because she wasn't the only one who desperately wanted to stay together.

XXX

Hayate was used to being overlooked. It kind of came with the territory when your main focus was sneaking around, with a bit of kenjutsu thrown in to spice things up a bit.

But being overlooked was no excuse for being uninformed. He'd known that Team 7 had come back to Konoha with their teacher's ashes, because the death of someone of Hatake Kakashi's caliber spread like a wildfire in Konoha's rumor-mill.

Of course, generally it was more amusing to try and work out the origin of whatever absurd rumor had popped up. But to go digging and find out that he really _was_ dead? It was a blow to everyone.

A legend who could've one day been a candidate for the position of Hokage, dead on a mislabeled C-ranked mission. Ninja life could be hazardous, but that kind of thing really drove the point home. One moment of inattention could mean the end for anyone.

Still, he hadn't exactly been close to Hatake – hell, he wasn't even close to anyone _else_ who'd really been all that close to Hatake, Yugao included – so the man's death hadn't really effected his life any. That is, until he got a summons from the Hokage.

Three genin who'd grown too close in their grief to be split up, three genin without a jounin-teacher, three genin who'd likely have reacted quite hostile to the special-jounin whom they would've been assigned to by default. Apparently, Uzumaki and Ebisu had history.

In hindsight, maybe he should've even been suspecting it. His miserable health wasn't exactly a secret to anyone, and neither was his ability with a sword. So to put him in charge of a team of genin who'd be temporarily restricted to Konoha, when one of the genin came from a family of eloped samurai, one of the others had bad history with a great many people, and the final one was a political minefield...

Well, Hayate had never shown any political inclinations, and he'd never really had cause to interact with the Uzumaki, so he was actually probably a really good option. At least on a temporary trial-basis, until a better alternative could be provided.

But that didn't make it any less bizarre to be told that he was going to be supervising the three genin of Team 7 on their many future D-ranks.

Hopefully, it wouldn't start any hilariously absurd rumors about him teaching a young girl how to wield a sword like a ninja instead of a samurai. Not so much because it'd be false, but more because the rumor would in all likelihood include a reminder of how he'd met his current lover.

Yugao had come to him for training with kenjutsu, once upon a time, and he was sure that some gleefully sadistic bastard would make a mention of him 'trading her in for a younger version' that would then explode all over the rumor-mill.

Hayate paused, thoughtfully.

He should probably go dig out some of his blackmail on Ibiki as a preemptive measure. His old friend might not decide to _start_ the rumors – this time – but it probably wouldn't hurt to have him help out with keeping Mitarashi Anko's mouth shut.

Yugao probably wouldn't fall for it, but she could get _frosty_ when she was upset, and he really didn't want to risk it.

XXX

Hayate leaned back into the tree, thoughtful.

Uchiha Sasuke was described as asocial at best, and Uzumaki Naruto had a _long_ history of being at odds with civilians. So, that he'd end up finding the two of them in the Haruno-family living room was a bit of a surprise.

Haruno Sakura might've invited them, but that they'd taken her up on that invitation showed that the trio had grown a lot closer since they'd left on the Wave-mission. Which was good, because teamwork was important and there'd been a lot of worries on whether Team 7 would last a week before they tried to kill each other.

That, however seemed to have resulted in a different kind of development.

If Hayate was reading the mood right, the five of them all seemed to get along fabulously. Sure, Sasuke still kept mostly to himself, but he listened attentively whenever Sakura's father went on one of his – somewhat infamous in the neighborhood – long-winded data-dumps of random trivia, and he wasn't above joining in on the conversations that sprung up around him.

As for Naruto... well, he seemed to be either trying to empty the Haruno-family's pantry, or pass out from blushing too hard whenever Sakura's mother smiled at him. Which probably meant that someone had a crush, which was kind of childishly adorable.

It didn't look like two boys being invited into a female friend's home by her overprotective parents, but an awful lot more like an extended family reuniting.

And civilians generally didn't do that. Not with ninja. Not when their daughter had just come home from a mission that had killed the man they'd entrusted her safety to. Not when their daughter had come home with a kill-count in the double-digits.

No, whoever Sakura's parents were now, they'd been exposed to battle at some point. Probably to the point where they'd wandered around in a battlefield of their own, but considering the timing-...

Samurai didn't field child-soldiers. Ninja did, to the point where it didn't even seem all that strange to send off ten-year-olds into war-zones. But samurai were notoriously decisive about that kind of thing. They trained and they trained, and they didn't see true battle until they were well into their teens.

And yet Sakura's parents must've been exposed to a war-zone at... mid-teens at the latest, if the time-line matched up properly. Which was very curious because they were generally assumed to be samurai who'd eloped at a young age.

If they'd been exposed to an actual battlefield though-... well, that might mean that their first daughter – and the ridiculously young age they must've been at the time – maybe wasn't actually the reason that they were clan-less.

Hayate made a mental note to drop off that theory at the Hokage's office, just to make sure that it was added to the pile of potential things to keep an eye on. Regardless of harmlessness, more information was always better.

Black eyes glanced out through the window, passing over his genjutsu-hidden form, and Hayate suddenly had to suppress a shudder. There was something... eerily deliberate about how those eyes had _not_ lingered on his hiding-place.

Oh sure, Sakura's father was likely a trained samurai, but samurai couldn't see through genjutsu. At least not ones that were as good as his. He'd damn well made sure of that over the course of his career. But even so-... Hayate got the distinct feeling that he was being deliberately ignored for some reason.

Shaking his head, Hayate glanced back at the gathered family and the two boys who'd been so readily welcomed into their home, and decided that perhaps he should just go and report this to the Hokage and then go home for a nap.

He knew where they were now, and had some idea of their interaction. And honestly, he wasn't paid enough to justify standing around outside staring through a window.

Much better to turn in a report to the Hokage, and then get back to his apartment and see if Yugao had decided to commandeer his bed again.

XXX

Sakura woke up half-collapsed across something warm. A weight was pinning her hips sideways, she was stretched out across something that was breathing slowly, and a blanket had been draped awkwardly over her.

Blearily opening her eyes, Sakura realized that she was on their couch, and that her uncomfortable position was due to her teammates sharing the couch with her. It wasn't really designed for _one_ person to sleep comfortably in, let along three.

Still, from the way the blanket had been twisted around, Sakura was willing to bet that they'd all fallen asleep sitting up, and then kind of fallen into a heap at some later point. Probably because Naruto – the one she was currently on top of – had leaned outwards instead of inwards, which had caused Sasuke and herself to follow after him.

Considering that the edge of Sakura's hip was digging into Sasuke's ribs, and that Naruto's arm had kind of turned pale from lack of blood-flow at some point during the night, everyone were going to be pretty miserable waking up.

Making a mental note to _never_ fall asleep together on the couch with the boys ever again, Sakura wondered how she was supposed to untangle herself from the blanket and the way Sasuke's weight was pinning her down.

Blinking stupidly for a long moment, a small part of Sakura's brain suddenly registered the technicality of how jealous Ino would've been if she could've seen them right now. But that was mostly dismissed, because she wasn't going to be dealing with this shit until she'd at least had breakfast.

It was nice to see that her parents hadn't been hostile towards either of her teammates, though from some of their reactions Sakura was guessing that they either reminded them of someone or something in their past, or that dad had taken another dip into psychology-books recently. The Wave-mission had hung like a weight over the conversation, true, but it'd been fairly easy to ignore it for some reason.

Maybe it'd been the rarely shared stories from before her parents arrived in Konoha, or the way mom had kept stuffing Naruto with food until he looked like he was about to burst, or how her dad looked genuinely interested in what a medic-nin could expect to study.

Somehow, as she lay there, staring up at the ceiling and pinned awkwardly to their already lumpy couch, for the first time since Kakashi-sensei's death, Sakura got the feeling that things were going to be alright.

XXX

There were generally two ways for a team to work together. Trust, or reliance.

The Ino-Shika-Chou trio was a 'reliance'-oriented team, whilst the Legendary Sannin was a 'trust'-oriented one. Which, when compared with those examples, made it seem like one was better than the other, which was wrong.

Reliance-teams worked with techniques that relied on the presence of other techniques to be effective. Combination-jutsu, usually being the center-piece. It was a synergy-effect, where the pieces became stronger when they made a whole. And most teams were combined so that at least some type of reliance-orientation was possible within the team.

There was a reason that the Ino-Shika-Chou trio had been immediately recreated in the next generation.

Trust-teams were usually what happened later on in a shinobi's career. A group of individually skilled ninja, being placed on a team to carry out a specific mission, and then trusting each other to actually be capable of watching each other's backs. There wasn't really much of a synergy-effect on these teams, but it usually lent itself towards some very powerful individuals.

In truth however, most reoccurring teams were a mixture of both.

The Sannin had focused on different specialties, and it had let them rely on the others for backup in situations where one skill was better than another. And the members of Ino-Shika-Chou were powerful shinobi in their own right, even if they were stronger together.

Team 7 was very much a 'trust'-oriented team.

Hayate wasn't entirely sure what to think of Uchiha Sasuke declaring that he wanted to become a medic-nin, but considering that the kid had watched his last teacher die in front of him whilst he was helpless-... Well, Hayate certainly wasn't going to say that his new ambition was a bad one. The world could always use more healers.

Uzumaki Naruto wanting to get better at distance-fighting was a bit less of a surprise, but it wasn't as if Hayate could really help him on that front. He was specialized towards kenjutsu and stealth, not long-distance support. Still, he'd heard some rumors about Gai and his students, and Gai was very much a close-distance fighter, so it probably wasn't impossible – though considering how it was _Gai_ that was probably a bit too generous – to teach something outside of his own specialty.

In contrast, Haruno Sakura was very much within his own specialty, but her kenjutsu-style was different. More reliant on thrusts and quick deflects, than his own samurai-inspired style that emphasized slicing and dodging. But she had her parents to turn to for training in that, and Hayate could definitely teach her a few genjutsu to make her life easier.

First things first though, Hayate gave Sasuke a quick explanation of where to go and who to talk to at the hospital, because whilst Hayate didn't know anything beyond basic first aid, his chronic cough meant that he had become enough of a regular to have a few contacts. It always paid to have a few favors to call in – or a bit of harmless blackmail material to dangle over someone's head.

Interestingly enough, the Uchiha didn't immediately wander off in that direction, but instead stayed behind to try and explain how to pull off some of the more advanced shuriken-techniques to Naruto. Who in turn listened to him attentively, and didn't seem nearly as prone to zoning out as his academic records would've had him believe.

Whilst they worked on that, Hayate turned to Sakura, and quickly discovered why the girl hadn't become a prodigy at genjutsu despite her smarts and her remarkable chakra-control.

She thought in numbers.

Oh, there wasn't anything wrong with that. But when it came to genjutsu, it'd always been more of an art than a science. And even if Sakura spent the rest of her life dedicating herself to mastering genjutsu, she'd never become a genjutsu-mistress. She might be able to become decent at it, but the big stuff would be out of her reach.

Still, some ability was better than none, and it would give the girl an option to scare her enemies away so that she didn't have to kill them all the way down to the last man.

Hayate had read the mission-report, and he wasn't sure if he was worried or relieved by how at ease the two who'd actually killed people were. A seasoned jounin wouldn't blink at what they'd done, but they were genin who'd experienced their first kill in the middle of what might as well have been a war-zone. A bit of distress would've been expected, even if they must've had time to acclimatize to it all before returning home, and it hadn't really been there.

So, giving the genin who might be on the verge of a future breakdown a chance to solve conflict non-violently by intimidation-tactics-... There were certainly worse ways to spend his afternoon.

XXX

Hayate-sensei seemed nice enough. Kind of like looked he'd been coughing too hard to sleep for the last few years, but nice.

He was better than Sakura was with genjutsu, and probably always would be, because it turned out that – despite her impressive chakra-control – Sakura was ridiculously unsuited for it. But Sasuke was better at throwing weapons than their new teacher, so he'd been temporarily saddled with teaching Naruto to actually hit what he was aiming at.

All in all, it could easily have been worse.

Kakashi's funeral came and went, a quiet ceremony in front of the Memorial Stone, and the world continued onwards.

Ino had made a brief appearance, apparently having heard of Kakashi dying and wanting to check up on Sakura, but it wasn't really like they had a lot to talk about anymore. The rivalry for Sasuke's affection, that Sakura had once broken her friendship with Ino over, now seemed so distant to her mind.

Most of Team 8 also made a brief appearance, though despite being the loudest one among them, Kiba had definitely not been the instigator of the visit. Sakura made a mental note to tease Naruto horribly over Hinata's crush, but decided to let it slide until sometime down the road. No need to taint something like that with the memory of a dead teacher still clinging to the back of their minds.

Team 7 remained trapped on D-rank missions under Hayate-sensei, Naruto improved by leaps and bounds because apparently he'd been too easily distracted to learn anything at all in a classroom environment, Sakura's mom slowly started to look more proud than embarrassed when she taught her kenjutsu, and Sasuke got used to having his superiors yelling at him for having the worst bedside-manners this side of Kiri.

Despite his determination to heal people, Sasuke most definitely wasn't a people-person. And he didn't mind if the entire world knew about it.

It was kind of amazing watching him, in a morbid kind of way. He'd thankfully been permanently banned from interacting with children after that one time he'd tried to knock one of them unconscious because they were scared of the big needle. But his ninja-interaction was still going strong, and more than a few of his coworkers had begun deliberately releasing him on especially annoying patients.

Something about him having enough political clout that nobody would ever be willing to press charges as long as he didn't leave permanent marks.

Sakura shook her head, amused despite herself.

Konoha's hospitals were scary places.

XXX

Kabuto was a little bit frustrated.

On the one hand, with Uchiha Sasuke aiming to become a medic-nin, Kabuto had good reason to strike up conversation. Countless opportunities to endear himself to the Sharingan-bearer for the sake of then using those 'bonds' to lure him away from Konoha and into Orochimaru's arms.

However, that was only true on paper. In reality, trying to strike up conversation with Sasuke was a bit like trying to strike up conversation with a seagull defending its nest. It was far more likely to go for your eyes and then pretend as if nothing had happened once the danger of conversation was past, than it was to actually respond in an even remotely useful manner.

Which was frustrating. Opportunity upon opportunity, slipping through his fingers every day, because to actually act on them would be to have his fingers bitten off by the violent little bastard.

Orochimaru had expected for Sasuke to be easily lured from his course by the promise of power, tainted though it might be. But despite his atrocious bedside-manners and blatant hatred for humanity as a whole, Uchiha Sasuke was set on his course and far too stubborn to waver from it.

Sasuke had decided to dedicate his life to helping people. To healing people, rather than to protect them. He had no more desire for power than any medic grasping at straws to keep their patients alive, probably even less so actually, considering his general level of casual hostility.

There wasn't much Kabuto could do about that, really. He could try to sabotage the boy's education or testing until he grew frustrated with Konoha's inability to recognize his ability, and then try and coax him away. But that was very high-risk and would likely fall apart the moment Sasuke put any actual thought into the later offer of leaving Konoha.

So, in the end, he sent off a message to his master that the boy's personality had become unsuitable for plans relying on voluntary defection, and had offered a few non-voluntary alternatives to acquiring the aspiring medic-nin.

But of course, Orochimaru had an invasion to plan, a Kazekage to impersonate, paperwork to be done, and experiments to deal with. Acquiring Uchiha Sasuke would certainly be a boon, but it wasn't of immediate necessity.

Still, the boy's attitude and proximity grated on Kabuto's nerves.

XXX

 **A/n: This fic was expanded from "A Ninja's Parents" from ABoaU on behalf of two things. 1- Someone mentioned how swords were perfectly normal for ninja (and I wanted to rant about my thoughts on it), and 2- I'd just read "Firestorm" by PureWaterLily and been really annoyed by how it handled a lot of its plot-twists.**

 **It kind of escalated from there, even if there'll only be one more chapter (the next chapter will also include the epilogue).**


	2. Chapter 2

[A Ninja's Parents] Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

XXX

Hayate shrugged at the gathered jounin. "As a special-jounin and an interim replacement, I don't have the authority to nominate Team 7 for the chunin exam."

Hiruzen sighed, looking pained at the reminder of Kakashi's death. "Noted, Gekkou-san."

The rest of the room shifted uneasily as well, discomforted at the memory of the man's recent funeral-service.

Still, that left two rookie-teams to participate in the exam, along with a fairly average amount of older ones, and hopefully it would be a strong enough showing of Konoha's abilities that no other Villages decided to try to take advantage of the infamous Copy-Cat ninja's demise.

Hayate was admittedly not entirely pleased with being unable to nominate Team 7. It was true that he didn't have the technical legal authority, and that he hadn't actually seen them interact on anything above D-ranks, but they clearly had potential. A strong work-ethic, a fierce loyalty towards each other, and a healthy amount of talent. Yes, there was definitely potential to be found with Team 7, and having them try for chunin this early probably wouldn't hurt them.

No matter how lousy Sakura was with genjutsu, or how atrocious Sasuke's bedside-manners were, or how painfully awkward Naruto's taijutsu was. They definitely had room for improvement – except Sasuke and his problems with people, because Hayate would be the first to admit that he couldn't even begin to imagine that kid ever pretending to be nice to people – but it was more a potential for growth than a number of faults to correct.

So it was with a sting of guilt that he watched everyone begin to file out of the Hokage's office. This would be the only exam in Konoha for a bit over a year if he remember correctly, and the next few would be in Kumo and Iwa respectively. And sending Team 7 to either of those Villages would be foolish at the very least.

All in all, because of shitty timing, it was looking like Team 7 would be stuck as genin for a good long while.

Hayate shook his head with a sigh of his own. At least they'd hopefully be too distracted with training to be too upset about it.

XXX

Hiruzen frowned.

Kakashi would've definitely nominated Team 7, and even Hayate seemed to be very much aware of that if his expressions had been anything to go by. The special-jounin certainly seemed to believe they had the potential to try for it as they were, even if he didn't trust it enough to go against protocol in such an open setting.

And of course Jiraiya was still pretending to ignore his messages to return to Konoha.

The man knew perfectly well that Hiruzen would try and drop the genin-team in his lap the moment he put a foot inside of the Village's walls, and-... And even Hiruzen could admit that the man probably wouldn't survive losing another student, let alone three.

But no matter how resigned he was to Jiraiya's behavior, he still wished the man hadn't responded to his request by suddenly beginning to meander away in the _exact opposite direction of Konoha_.

He wasn't sure if it was meant as an intentional insult, or if Jiraiya had somehow managed to be completely unaware of how Danzo would definitely have people available who'd be able to catch his blatant refusal of a direct order – no matter how half-hearted or low-priority – and translate it into an insult, at the worst possible time, to anyone who might listen.

Hiruzen sighed and turned back to his paperwork. Frowning about it wasn't going to make it better, and he still had a chunin exam to keep in order.

XXX

Sakura tilted her head. "Chunin exams?"

Ino nodded. "Yeah. Asuma-sensei nominated us."

Which was why she'd come looking for them, Sakura assumed. They didn't have Kakashi-sensei to nominate them, so-... so what, exactly? Was Ino there to rub her nomination in their faces, or was she there because she was worried that they wouldn't take the exam with her, or was she there because she wanted to share the good news, or was she there because she was terrified of doing an exam and was hoping for reassurances?

It was hard to tell with Ino, she came from a family that had turned reading people into an art-form, and it made it kind of difficult to predict her.

"Anything we should know?" Sakura asked, keeping her voice politely neutral.

Ino stared at her for a long moment, weighing her reaction, before shaking her head slightly. "Asuma-sensei says that it's an international exam, so there'd be non-Konoha teams wandering about the Village for a bit." She grinned suddenly, and the smug glee didn't even seem all that forced. Ino really was a good actress. "But if you guys aren't there, then obviously _my_ team is going to kick everyone else's ass. So you can start calling me 'Ino-sama' right now, for the sake of practice."

Despite herself, Sakura felt her own lips twitch in response. She'd kind of missed not having someone walking on eggshells around them, even if Ino still kind of was – she just hid it better. "Ah, I guess that makes sense." Sakura nodded to herself as if she'd suddenly realized something. "If it's an exam for _rookies_ , then it'd just be unfair for us to barge in on it. No sportsmanship at all."

Ino paused, looking a bit as if she'd just bitten into something sour without expecting it. Then she stomped cutely and marched off, throwing a final taunt over her shoulder. "We'll see if you're so smug when I out-rank you, forehead!"

Sakura very carefully didn't grin at the sight. It wouldn't do to ruin her image of 'innocently understanding' in case Ino looked back, no matter how false they both knew that image to be.

Shaking her head to herself, Sakura briefly wondered why all of her friends were so weird.

XXX

Sasuke just grunted and returned to his reading. Apparently he hadn't learned everything he could learn as a genin yet, so there wasn't really a need for him to go climbing in rank. Especially since chunin would get stuck with more missions that could interrupt his studies.

Naruto made a face, and seemed kind of annoyed about not being nominated, but kept quiet since Sasuke wasn't putting up a fuss. Personally, Sakura was guessing that Naruto's silent was also heavily reliant on the understanding that genin-teams would often get split up once one or more of them reached chunin.

Sakura was kind of terrified at being out in the field without a jounin watching over their shoulder every step of the way. Sure, they'd survived just fine in Wave even when Gato and his thugs had attacked them, but Kakashi had been the one to really take down all of the ninja, so it wasn't really like they'd had a lot of opposition left at that point.

Hayate had been politely apologetic about it, trying to avoid causing offense about having failed to nominate them in Kakashi's place. But it wasn't as if any of them really wanted to become chunin right now anyway, so it was probably for the best.

Still, the fact that there was some kind of international competition for an exam, piqued her curiosity. It would've been interesting to see what it was like.

XXX

Sakura glanced at the brackets of competitors.

Ino would be up against some 'Gaara'-person, Shikamaru would be up against a 'Temari', and Kiba would be up against a 'Dosu'. Shino would apparently be getting a by to face whoever won of 'Neji' and 'Kankuro'.

It was kind of impressive how most of the ones taking part in the final tournament were rookie genin from Konoha, even if apparently the only Suna-team to participate had been able to reach this point in full. The age-old argument between quantity and quality.

First up to fight was Kiba and Dosu – who was part of 'Sound' wherever that was – and it kind of crashed and burned pretty spectacularly actually.

The Sound-nin's gauntlet apparently produced some kind of vibration-attack, and it was painful for the Inuzuka to even really be in the vicinity of where the guy was swinging his arm. Possibly because of Kiba's sensitive ears, though the fact that Dosu was causing rock to crack said that that probably wasn't the only reason.

The fight was pretty one-sided, since Kiba's taijutsu-specialization was more-or-less useless against his opponent's arm-weapon. Kiba might be decent with kunai, but he wasn't good enough at it to rely on it entirely.

That was Naruto's comments on it, at least. The blond was shaking his head in wincing sympathy whenever Kiba screwed up one of his throws, often grimacing long before Sakura herself even realized what had gone wrong that time around.

Apparently Naruto's training had really been paying off, because every comment she heard him mutter to himself next to her, were comments to training-exercises that she remembered him having struggled with for weeks. Sasuke was a good teacher, though he couldn't take all the credit.

One of these days, Sakura would figure out why Naruto always got so dodgy about introducing them to his secret fellow genin 'training partner'. She'd probably have pushed harder if Hayate hadn't looked like he'd been trying very hard not to laugh at them.

Either Naruto's new friend was _really_ weird, or _really_ embarrassing. In the end, they'd dropped all attempts of interrogation when Naruto had let it slip that he'd run into Gai sometimes when they sparred.

No matter how potentially hilariously embarrassing it might be for Naruto, _nothing_ was worth the risk of having to spend time with Gai. Nothing.

The man had been trying to help them out every now and then 'in memory of his fallen rival', and he was actually surprisingly good at teaching. But having Gai teach you, meant that you actually had to spend time in Gai's vicinity. And that was just a horrible experience all around.

No, whoever Naruto's secret training-partner were, they'd have to remain a mystery. Much like how Sakura was going to continue to ignore the fact that both of her teammates technically had apartments of their own to live at, and didn't need to crash on her couch every day of the year.

It was nice, having them around, even if it'd reached the point where the two of them had more or less entirely moved into their guest-room, instead of the actual couch. Mostly though, she'd wish her parents stopped snickering to themselves about how she'd inherited her father's charm, whatever that meant.

Also, Naruto was surprisingly comfy to sleep on top of. Sasuke generally kneed her in the kidneys, or elbowed her in the face, but Naruto kind of just drooled on whatever he was using as a pillow. Positively benign in comparison, even if he had some tendencies towards cuddling.

She knew she had a tendency to bite people who tried to wake her up, so it wasn't like they didn't all have some kind of bad sleeping-habit, even if Sasuke was the worst.

Frowning slightly at the reminder of her teammates' various faults, Sakura really wished that those two idiots would stop scattering their underwear all over the damn room.

Then there was that curious thought about how Ino might react at hearing about Sakura biting Sasuke in the thigh after Naruto had very much failed to properly untangle himself from underneath her without trying to bend her knee backwards. But she quickly discarded it.

It'd feel weird to talk about that kind of thing to someone else. Besides, it wasn't as if there was anything interesting about it. Sasuke might look good in a pair of boxers and a t-shirt, and Naruto's sleeping-hat was hilariously dumb-looking, but she remembered sleepovers with Ino that were more sexually stimulating. And she hadn't been part of any of those since she was like... ten or something.

Perhaps puberty had come and passed her by already, or perhaps she'd kind of hit her head somewhere. She was sure she'd been attracted to people at some point, but she couldn't really remember why.

Sakura shook those thoughts from her head and continued to stare out over the arena with a dull expression on her face.

Shikamaru's match was boring.

Very strategically intimidating, but boring as hell to watch.

Kind of made her envious of Sasuke who'd scoffed incredulously at the idea of cheering for their old classmates, and had instead wandered off to help out at the hospital. He was kind of an asshole. But it sure sounded tempting to just leave, rather than force herself to remain seated, watching this fight go on for literally hours on end.

Shadow-jutsu or not, stalling to the point where he'd be able to use the _changing_ position of the sun to make his move was-... needlessly long-winded, surely? Wasn't this supposed to be entertaining? Where were the explosions and the passion? She felt cheated.

Then the next match was canceled because the Kankuro-guy apparently decided to surrender on the spot. Just... what the hell? What even was this tournament?

Grabbing onto the back of Naruto's jacket to keep him from springing to his feet and shouting something insulting at a foreigner, Sakura very carefully didn't admit that she _wholeheartedly agreed_ with Naruto calling him a cowardly coward who cowered. Though she made a mental note to actually teach the blond proper swear-words at some point in the future, because that was kind of pathetic.

Thankfully, Ino would be up next, so perhaps they'd get something actually worth watching.

Hope sprang eternal, and all that.

XXX

From his fight in the preliminaries, Gaara was the type to not move. His defense was pretty much perfect, but he wouldn't dodge an attack. He would block it, every time.

Still, to make sure she wasn't wrong about that, Ino threw a few kunai at him and suppressed the shudder at how his sand moved to stop them with ease. She was really outclassed as far as offensive and defensive power was concerned.

She _did_ have something up her sleeve though, so that was alright.

Taking a deep breath to brace herself, Ino used the Mind Body Switch on the creepy Suna-nin once his sand retreated out of the way again.

It hurt.

It hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt-!

There was a weight at her back, pressing down on her, trying to crush her, trying to grind her into dust, trying to grind her mind away into oblivion. It hurt so much that her knees buckled. But they weren't her knees, they were the Suna-nin's knees.

It hurt to think, it hurt to be aware of her surroundings, it hurt to try and hide away.

She had the strangest impression of standing over a small form, the ragged and torn form of a boy who suddenly looked so pathetically small. Looming over him, and being crushed in return by the massive weight of something that wanted to squash her like a bug.

Was this-...? Was this what Gaara had to suffer through all the time? That horrible presence trying to grind him away every moment of the day? No wonder he was insane. He looked so small all of a sudden, had he always been that small?

An impression of _"Cannot bend, must stay awake"_ echoed through her from that tiny worn-out body, as if he was trying to overcome her technique with sheer force of will. But she-... Ino didn't want to abandon him. He looked so vulnerable and so desperate and so hopeless that she just wanted to cry.

The pain was agony, but even so she sent an impression in return. _"Will stand guard in your place. Will endure in your place. Sleep and rest. You've done enough for now."_

And then she straightened her spine, and she gritted her teeth. She was Yamanaka Ino, heir of her clan, and the backbone of her pathetically unenthusiastic genin-team.

And. She. Would. Not. Bend.

He slept, she remained, and the gigantic presence at her back roared in impotent fury at her determination.

XXX

Kabuto made a face.

He'd assumed that the Yamanaka-girl would get her mind eaten by the Ichibi when she used that technique of hers, and had prepared the genjutsu accordingly. It would be best for everyone to sleep and let the – at that point highly stressed – psychopath of a jinchuuriki go berserk unhindered.

But apparently the girl had some ability to give the bijuu pause in breaking free from her control, and so Konoha was now suddenly in charge of the bijuu specifically brought there to destroy Konoha. Which was definitely not an ideal situation to be in.

Still, there wasn't much they could do except cut their losses and attack the Yamanaka-girl openly in an effort to force her back into her own body so that Gaara could go on the rampage that they needed him for.

There were of course other things for Kabuto to be doing than to attack an unresponsive genin's body, and at least one very important scheduled event.

He needed to go fetch Uchiha Sasuke from the hospital. Which was somewhat annoying, because he'd originally assumed that the medic-nin would follow his teammates' initiative and be part of the audience. But no, the boy had to make things needlessly complicated by hiding out in the hospital to get some reading done.

He really didn't like that brat.

But Orochimaru wanted an Uchiha for his new body, and so Kabuto would deliver. He was after all an entirely loyal and humble servant.

XXX

Hiruzen was suddenly very happy that he'd 'invited' Danzo to the show – it'd been more an order than a voluntary thing. He'd been wanting to make a point to all who watched that even if one of their legends was dead, they still had shinobi powerful enough to grow old and decrepit, even as he hammered home to the masses the might of the new generation of Konoha-nin.

He'd been hoping to make it a powerful political message.

Then Orochimaru had popped out of nowhere with an invasion-force, and suddenly Hiruzen and Danzo were standing back-to-back against two undead Hokage and an S-class missing-nin.

Any backup was better than none, even if the years hadn't been kind to his old rival. Though it made Hiruzen wonder about the future of Konoha should they both die.

It wasn't as if there were really anyone available to take up the Hat in his absence. Otherwise he would've retired years ago.

XXX

Sasuke wasn't entirely sure what had happened.

Oh, he had a general idea of it, but the details were a complete blur. One moment he'd been startled out of his reading by village-wide alarms going off, the next he was rolling around on the ground trussed up in ninja-wire.

He was pretty sure that he'd let his guard down around that annoying 'senpai' who'd come rushing to the hospital, and then the asshole had attacked him. Which probably meant that it was either not him, or that he'd actually been a traitor all along. Either way, trying to stab him would've been perfectly justifiable, and Sasuke had been well on his way to worming a hand free enough to reach for a kunai when his back hit the road.

It wasn't the most graceful of landings, but he didn't crack his head open despite his inability to do much more than wiggle around pathetically, so there was at least that. Even if the way the hand – the one which the severed arm was attached to – still had his shirt in an iron grip really creeped him out.

Generally, people didn't actually have detachable limbs, and Sasuke was pretty damn sure he could feel the body-heat evaporating from the thing at a comparable rate to the blood leaking out of the severed part of it. A rate that – despite the medical impossibility of it – was somehow faster than the one that the asshole's new stump was leaking. There was a _heart_ right next to that wound, a massive pump that was kind of fascinatingly effective. And yet... the wound wasn't leaking as much blood as the dribbling end of the already-severed limb.

So... some kind of healing-technique probably. Which would've been a very useful observation to have if Sasuke's mouth hadn't been paralyzed somehow. Dick move, asshole, dick move.

No matter how effective it might be to keep your kidnap-victims from screaming for help, Sasuke wasn't feeling overly charitable about the professionalism involved, mostly due to the thought of being unable to talk properly for _hours_ after this, _at best_. Asshole.

His attention wandering instead to his rescuer, Sasuke suddenly found himself mildly grateful that going slack-jawed when you were already on the floor with a paralyzed mouth wasn't exactly noticeable.

Haruno Kazuto and Haruno Asuna, both carrying swords. And, despite the chillingly polite smile on both of their faces, Sasuke had the distinct impression that they were most definitely not happy about the situation.

Asuna darted in, piercing through the hand that Kabuto raised in his defense with her rapier. Or, that's what Sasuke assumed must've happened anyway. He didn't actually see her move. One moment she was standing still, the next she was ripping her rapier free from the shredded remains of Kabuto's only remaining hand, causing the kunai he'd been holding onto to clatter uselessly to the ground. "Switch!"

She dodged away out of reach of a kick that would've caught her legs, and then that leg was met with an equally vicious cut with one of Kazuto's two swords. There was a crack, and the leg was nearly sheared in half, only for the second sword to move in towards Kabuto's head.

Kabuto bent out of the way, showing surprising maneuverability for a guy who'd pretty much lost the use of all but one remaining limb. Another kick, though perhaps this was more an acrobatic flip than an actual kick.

"Switch!" Asuna's rapier went into the soft tissue of Kabuto's stomach, and though he twisted away, her blade still must've done some damage to the insides of his ribcage from that angle. The attack allowing Kazuto to retreat to safety.

"Switch!" Kirito came in from a different side, again aiming for Kabuto's head. And the medic-nin dropped down to avoid the attack-, and fell to the ground as Asuna's rapier stabbed him through the knee on his one remaining leg. Kirito took advantage of that in return and swung his second sword, severing Kabuto's head from his body.

The exchange took maybe a few seconds, and quite frankly Sasuke was suddenly feeling a lot more appreciative towards civilians, if this was the level of ability they were all secretly hiding under their regular jobs. He kind of doubted it, but still.

Sakura's parents were _cool_.

Kazuto frowned at the corpse, before glancing towards Sasuke. "Asuna-," He started.

Asuna however, had already started to move, thrusting forward with her rapier once again, this time piercing through Kabuto's skull.

Kirito blinked at her, confused. "Wha-?"

"Zombie-protocols." Asuna said grimly.

Kirito twitched, then turned suspicious eyes towards the corpse. The corpse whose head, Sasuke noted distractedly, had finally started to bleed properly. Meaning that the medic-nin must've literally been trying to heal from _having his head cut off_.

There was a long silent moment between the two, before Kirito spoke up again. "You're the best." He sounded so honestly smitten that Sasuke nearly turned away from Kabuto's cooling corpse to stare at them.

Thankfully though, he managed to continue to ignore the two idiot-parents deciding to act like newlyweds in the middle of a war-zone. Though, admittedly, that was almost entirely due to the sudden realization that medic-nin were _crazy_.

Sasuke felt his lips twitching into a mad grin. He couldn't wait to tell Naruto about this. That ridiculous scaredy-cat would have nightmares about disembodied heads coming after him for _weeks_.

XXX

Hayate wasn't sure what Naruto had learned from his new 'tutor', mostly because he'd very deliberately stayed the hell away from the whole thing the moment he'd figured out who it was.

Ignoring the amusing way that Tenten and Naruto seemed to click in their love for all things sharp and pointy, there was _never_ a bad reason to avoid being roped into Gai's antics. And considering that the man would hide out in bushes and sparkle brightly about 'blooming youth' to himself as he watched the two, Hayate knew that Gai would definitely drag him into it.

Sure, it was cute that Naruto kind of looked at Tenten with a mixture of admiration, awe, and-... well, there was no denying the way that he'd go slack-jawed and his eyes would glaze over a bit whenever Tenten laughed about something. Or the way he blushed about any praise she gave him, even if she still seemed pretty damn oblivious about it.

Apparently, the kid had a thing for older girls.

So, without any regrets, Hayate had surrendered the task of teaching Naruto the art of throwing stuff to the young weapon-mistress. She was better suited for teaching him, and the two of them definitely seemed to enjoy spending time together.

He also wasn't entirely sure of the details of the kenjutsu-style Sakura had learned from her family. He understood enough to know that it was a useful style, and that she was learning from a competent source. That was really all he needed to make sure of on that particular subject.

In comparison, he actually had a very good idea of the details of what Sasuke was learning on his own time. Mainly because the hospital seemed to enjoy keeping him up to date on what he was doing there.

Hayate had long since made a personal note to avoid the hospital at all costs until Sasuke had either moved onto field-work or retired entirely. No way was he going to willingly expose himself to the violent little monster. No matter how gleeful the members of the hospital-staff were with his presence, they'd still ended up giving Hayate an awful amount of paperwork about the numerous complaints against the Uchiha and his 'personal touch' with his patients.

It takes a special kind of madness to break a guy's leg so that they stopped trying to run away from having their ribs examined.

But even if he didn't know all of the details of their personal training-regimes, Hayate knew very well how they worked together in a fight. So he wasn't really surprised. Kind of guiltily proud that they were now his students instead of Kakashi's, but not surprised.

All around the coliseum, foreign ninja were dropping their disguises to attack both surprised Konoha-nin and the hapless civilians still caught in the genjutsu. And Naruto and Sakura were doing very well in keeping things under control, despite the likelihood that the ninja they were fighting were actually higher rank than they were.

Most of the other rookie-genin had also closed ranks to keep the civilians safe, but none of them were quite as offense-oriented as his two students, choosing instead to play the defensive game. Neither good nor bad, it merely showed that Team 7 apparently had a more aggressive skill-set to make use of than their old classmates.

Hayate still breathed a sigh of relief upon finding his two students, because they were his responsibility, and he hadn't exactly been in the vicinity when the alarms had gone off. He knew that Sasuke would be at the hospital, and he knew that it was highly unlikely that anyone actually managed to get to him in one of the most defensible buildings in the Village. He couldn't watch over the three of them at once, and whilst he could send Sakura and Naruto off to the hospital, it was likely already so full of ninja that having them underfoot would probably be more likely to hinder them than help.

Harsh as it might seem to let the two of them fight in what basically amounted to a war-zone, Hayate kind of seriously doubted he could've stopped Naruto from fighting if he'd tried.

Besides, as the situation continued and the other genin began gathering the civilians for evacuation, it became increasingly obvious that the two members of Team 7 were actually a lot better at eliminating the opposition than even some of the ninja guards. They couldn't really afford to lose that edge in the middle of an invasion of their home Village.

So instead of swooping in and sparing their innocent little hearts from blood and gore, Hayate continued methodologically slicing his way through Suna-nin and Sound-nin alike. Even if he made sure to keep a careful eye on his two students and their opponents.

If field-promotions were going to be a thing in the immediate future, Team 7 might stand a good chance at reaching chunin before the month was out.

Only time would tell, really.

XXX

Fighting ninja was very different from fighting thugs.

Ninja were faster, more agile, used ninjutsu, and were basically fully capable of hitting back.

Sakura dodged out the way of a thrown kunai, sent her blade piercing through the flesh of another enemy, and stepped aside to give one of Naruto's clones a clear shot at a third ninja.

Fighting in a battle always seemed so chaotic. Blood and screaming, people bleeding out, corpses scattered around to trip over, and her sword's solid weight in her hand. It was a bit more chaotic with ninja though, since they added all kinds of weird ninjutsu to the mix, and the way she kept having to dodge away from attacks.

"Switch!" Sakura pushed away from the enemies that had been trying to flank her, allowing one of Naruto's clones to rush in to force them to 'trigger' their trap prematurely. One more death dodged, Sakura returned to the offensive.

Sakura briefly wondered if this was what her dad meant when he said that battle just kind of 'flowed away' when he tried to remember it. She'd probably inherited that from him. No matter how sharply the experience stood out in her mind as she rushed to stay alive, she sincerely doubted that she'd be able to remember much of this beyond a vague sense of knowing that she'd fought.

It wasn't a berserk-rage, dealing with tunnel-vision and battle-maddened rage. It was probably more something akin to battle-zen, where she could fight unhindered by anything beyond the current battle.

Another dodge, another strike, another dead body.

The battle moved onwards.

XXX

"Sakura, what does 'zombie-protocols' mean?"

Sakura glanced toward Sasuke from where she was sprawled out on the couch of their thankfully undamaged home. "Umm, it's kind of a theoretical 'how do you kill something that won't die'-guidebook. It's mostly a civilian thing, I think. Why?"

Sasuke tilted his head thoughtfully, before shrugging. "Your mom mentioned it."

Which was odd, because generally the only one who mentioned random weird things like that was her dad. "When?"

Sasuke's lips twitched. "When she stabbed a severed head through the eye."

Sakura made a face, even as Naruto made a squeak – the first noise he'd made that wasn't a mumble since the invasion had failed and they'd heard that the Sandaime had fallen in battle.

"What the hell, bastard?!" Naruto glared at his teammate.

"Double-tap." Sakura nodded, kind of understanding why she would've used zombie-protocols to explain herself, before frowning. "What the hell were they fighting that was that hard to kill?"

Sasuke glanced over at her from his place on the floor, where he was currently wrestling an offended Naruto into submission. "Enemy medic-nin."

Sakura made a face. "That makes way too much sense." She paused, trying to shake the image out of her head. "Seriously, there was someone who survived decapitation?"

Sasuke grinned, even as Naruto made a horrified noise. "He was still twitching, at least."

XXX

Their Hokage was dead.

The exact battle hadn't been mapped out yet, but it was safe to say that both sides of that clash had been eliminated to the last. Hiruzen was dead, Danzo was dead, and Orochimaru was dead.

Obviously, the death of the Sandaime meant that they needed to choose the Godaime Hokage before the other Villages figured out that both Konoha and Suna had been injured enough in the failed invasion that they'd be easy pickings.

Unfortunately, Hiruzen didn't exactly have a successor picked out. In fact, every single ninja that could've been in the running for it were either dead or otherwise unavailable. Kakashi was dead, Tsunade was solidly retired, Jiraiya had apparently already in-all-but-name openly refused a direct summon back to Konoha before the Chunin Exam even started-... They simply didn't have a decent candidate.

They needed someone with a powerful name to scare off the other Villages, something to prove Konoha's strength, despite their actual injuries. So they needed a famous name, and-... well, the only ones who came even remotely close enough to the famed power necessary were Sarutobi Asuma and Maito Gai.

Asuma would've been a wonderful option, except for the internal problem of making a former Guardian of the daimyo their new Hokage. After all, no matter how much Konohagakure was technically subservient to their daimyo, they were a separate existence, and needed to be able to actually negotiate about things. As in, giving the position of Hokage to someone who might easily be perceived as more loyal to the daimyo than to the Village itself would be a catastrophe, regardless of whether there was any truth behind the claim or not.

So Asuma's nomination to Hokage was a very shaky proposition on political grounds, even if his name would be recognized. Not to mention that it might stir up some questions about the man 'inheriting' his father's position, which could cause further complications.

That left Gai. Who was-... well, Gai.

The man was strong, could be inspiring when he really tried, and was pretty much utterly useless behind a desk. Ignoring the man's unusually eccentric behavior and the internal problems that it might cause, naming Gai Hokage was more likely to turn Konoha into a laughing-stock than to prove that they remained strong.

Of course, there were other names that could be considered.

Nara Shikaku was a viable option. Except for the tiny little fact that he was well-renowned as a battle-tactician, meaning that to put him in charge over Konoha as a whole would be to send a message to the other Villages that Konoha was gearing up for war. An impression that might be useful as a 'show of strength', but hopelessly counterproductive in their attempts to cover up their own injuries, since it would be more likely to provoke a preemptive strike than it was to stop the sharks from smelling blood.

In other words, they didn't have anyone who'd look impressive enough to the other Villages to take the Hat, and they didn't have anyone who'd actually be useful whilst wearing the Hat. Or at least, nobody who fit in both categories.

So, the only choice available was to take a leap of faith.

They needed a strong jounin who had some ability to lead and who was definitely loyal to Konoha and its Will of Fire.

Of course, before they tried that, they'd sent out another desperate missive to the two remaining Sannin about having them take up the Hat or risking doom upon Konoha.

Tsunade scared off the messenger with threats of immediate bodily harm, and Jiraiya kind of just sighed and wandered off to get drunk before sneaking out of the town they'd found him in. No further contact was made, and so they were on their own.

Konoha needed to choose a new Hokage, and they were truly pathetically short on viable choices.

So they let Akimichi Chouza take the floor.

XXX

"Sakura! You've got to help me!"

Sakura blinked, a little bit dazed as Ino nearly came barreling into her in the middle of the road. "Umm... With what?"

Ino kind of fidgeted in place in a way that actually looked a lot more like an awkward impromptu dance-routine than what she usually did when she was nervous. Hell, Ino looked like kind of like Sasuke when the hospital forced him to pull all-nighters and someone was standing in between himself and the coffee-machine. Only, more confusion and less murder.

It wasn't exactly a flattering look for the girl, and Sakura very nearly opened her mouth to ask if Ino had gotten any sleep at all, before she remembered that the invasion had probably been Ino's first big brush with combat, and that it wasn't unlikely that she was having nightmares about it. Sakura wasn't going to go around pouring salt on people who might still be bleeding, especially not people she cared about.

"Boys!" Ino paused, her wild hand-motions freezing temporarily as she considered that for a moment. "Well, technically, only _one_ boy." Her panic quickly returned however. "But I need help!"

Sakura wondered briefly why in the world Ino would be going to her for boy-advice, considering that they'd been on an equal amount of _zero_ dates. "Why are you asking _me_?"

Ino threw a hand out in the general direction of Sasuke – obviously she wasn't paying too much attention to it, because she probably would've accidentally decked him if he hadn't dodged out of the way in time. "You're on a team with _Sasuke-kun_! And you're not molesting him!"

Sakura honestly felt her brain kind of go a bit wonky at hearing someone shout that as if it was an accomplishment to keep her hands off of the bastard who kept kneeing her in the kidneys at three-in-the-goddamn-morning. Honestly, she was more likely to molest Naruto, though that was mostly because he was nice to sleep on top of. Even if he did drool everywhere.

"What." She stared at her old friend.

Ino, clearly desperate and probably not at all in her right mind, made a frustrated noise. "He follows me around like a puppy! How am I supposed to not molest him, Sakura?!" She grabbed Sakura's shoulders, shaking her frantically. "Tell me your secrets!"

Finally realizing that Ino's rambling was attracting a lot of weird glances from their surroundings, Sakura decided that enough was enough. She'd been woken up at an ungodly hour by Naruto screeching in her ear like a banshee – something about heads chasing him – she'd nearly dislocated her jaw by biting Naruto in the nose and having him flail around wildly, she'd had to listen to Sasuke's snickering refusals to heal either of them, she'd had to sit through Hayate-sensei staring suspiciously at the teeth-mark on Naruto's nose, and now she was being accosted by Ino.

Sakura hit the girl with a sleep-genjutsu. She went down like a house of cards.

Hayate glanced over at her from where he'd been politely ignoring the conversation. "Harsh, but fair."

Naruto was mostly just staring at Sasuke. "Why would anyone want to molest you anyway, bastard? It's not like you're nice to hug."

Sasuke shrugged. "Neither is Ino." He commented blandly.

Naruto scrunched up his nose in thought. "Does that mean you want to molest her too?"

Sakura ignored the two idiots and slung Ino over one of her shoulders. She was not going to get involved in a discussion about sexuality in the middle of a street. "Naruto, ask mom."

Naruto's face turned red. "What?!"

"Dad gives shitty answers." Sakura said sensibly. "So it's easier for everyone if you just ask mom first. I'm not even entirely sure dad knows where babies come from, honestly. He's kind of dense."

Hayate-sensei stifled a snicker, but Naruto looked curious and Sasuke looked awkward.

Sakura glanced at the medic-nin. "You were given the Talk by a nurse or something, like a month ago, weren't you?"

Sasuke made an offended noise and very blatantly didn't say anything to contradict it.

Sakura sighed. "You should probably talk to mom, too. There's more to it than the basic mechanics."

Sasuke spluttered, face red. Naruto still looked confused. And Hayate-sensei nearly fell over, choking on a mixture of coughs and laughter.

XXX

So it turned out that Ino had – after a _thorough_ scolding from her father about using the family techniques on someone with an obviously unstable psyche – somehow ended up in charge of keeping an eye on Gaara, until Konoha figured out what to do about him and his siblings.

This meant that Ino spent a lot of time hanging out with him, and sometimes – under careful supervision – using her Mind Switch to give Gaara a chance to rest without 'being devoured'. Apparently it wasn't a painless process, and that was a large contributor to why Ino looked so frazzled.

Beyond that, Shikamaru had apparently been slotted for a promotion to chunin, even if they weren't going to officially declare him as such until another week or so when things had calmed down somewhat and everyone had the paperwork ready. And Chouji's dad was somehow one of the main candidates for becoming Hokage, which was pretty bizarre to think about.

Life was weird on Team 10. Not quite as weird as Ino seemed to think it was on Team 7 – because apparently the idea of Naruto and Sasuke kind of moving in with Sakura and her parents was utterly absurd in Ino's eyes – but definitely weird.

Of course, back to the subject of Gaara. It seemed as if the redhead had grown quite attached to Ino, to the point where he kind of followed her around like a lost puppy and looked adorably awe-struck by her whenever she smiled at him.

Ino was seriously debating dragging the poor kid into a closet somewhere and ravishing him, and Sakura was a little bit nervous to realize that the ANBU that were probably also watching might not actually take measures to prevent Ino from doing so. There was a fair chance that they'd interfere once she actually _did_ it, but there was likely no actual preventive methods involved.

Which was why she dragged her off to talk about this with her dad. Her dad was _amazing_ at not molesting people, even when they bodily threw themselves at him. Though that probably wasn't entirely unrelated to how her mom generally kept a shinai within reach whenever someone female ended up visiting.

Sakura paused, thinking about that for a long moment.

Her mom literally had to beat women away from her husband with a stick. Wow.

Sakura silently resolved to never marry a guy who was either as dense or as pretty as her dad. It sounded like an awful lot of work.

XXX

"Naruto calm down." Sakura sighed, not really expecting it to work.

"Mission! Mission! Mission! A real mission!" Naruto practically vibrated on the spot, grinning widely.

Hayate was glancing towards the blond with some trepidation, apparently a little bit nervous about Naruto's unusual level of enthusiasm. Which kind of just proved how uncharacteristically non-loud Naruto had been over the months of D-ranks after their disastrous mission to Wave.

Even Sasuke looked a bit brighter around the edges, though that might have more to do with him not having to fight through sleep-deprivation through a mixture of caffeine and pure spite. Regardless, Sakura felt quite hopeful herself.

She didn't want to wander around Konoha with nothing to distract herself except continuous repair-work. Ignoring the unsettling realization that the dark stains that they were trying to clean away were the blood-stains of the previous owners of a shop, they'd been stuck on D-ranks even before most every genin available were dragged into the whole thing after the invasion, and it was becoming unimaginably dull.

So, even if it'd all gone wrong last time they'd left the Village on a C-rank, they were all stronger this time. And besides, it wasn't as if they'd end up running into an A-class missing-nin and his apprentice, this time around.

Not even their luck was _that_ bad.

XXX

Hayate took a deep breath, and then explained it again.

Akimichi Chouza, the Godaime Hokage, stared at him. "So, the caravan you were supposed to guard ended up running into the remnants of Sound."

Hayate nodded, resisting the urge to fidget.

"And then you somehow managed to save a village, destroy half a mountain, defeat dozens of enemy ninja, and uncover one of Orochimaru's old research-bases, before finally finishing the mission you were actually paid to do." Chouza looked like he had a sudden headache. "Right. Well, I guess that means that this will officially be reclassified as an accidentally mislabeled C-rank, because this report sounds and awful lot more like that of an A-rank."

Hayate shifted uncomfortably at the knowledge that with this, Team 7 would end up with something like over seventy D-ranks and two A-ranks to their name. Surely, there should be something in between those two mission-ranks? Where were the proper C-ranks? Or even the B-ranks?

Ignoring the grim reminder of Kakashi's death, their mission-records would end up looking utterly ridiculous at this rate.

Hayate made a face and decided that it was definitely time for him to start training even harder. Konoha in its weakened state really couldn't afford to leave a talented team of genin in the Village, dead teacher or no. And if Hayate was going to be acting as Team 7's jounin-teacher for the foreseeable future, then he clearly needed to be capable of surviving dragging a bunch of genin through the middle of a war-zone, just in case they were ever sent out to go track down a ferret or something.

Their luck was _that_ ridiculous.

XXX

Temari wasn't entirely sure what to think of her youngest brother.

Generally, he was fairly easy to read, seeing as how his moods could be roughly estimated as 'murderous' and 'not-quite-murderous-yet'. But after the failed invasion that he'd spent unconscious whilst that Yamanaka-girl wandered around in his body-...

Temari wasn't entirely sure if it was a good thing that her little brother had changed, or a very bad thing. Being a ninja, she was trained to expect the worst, and it was entirely possible that the blonde had wired Gaara to explode at some massively inappropriate time.

So even if she appreciated that her little brother seemed unusually non-murderous, it was hard to determine whether or not that was a good thing.

The trip back to Suna had been done mostly in shame-faced silence, seeing as they'd just ganged up and ambushed a major Village only to get their asses handed to them. But the real changes with Gaara started to pop up later.

They sent him after a missing-nin, figuring that he'd enjoy splattering the poor bastard across the desert to make up for his previous lack of bloodshed. And then Gaara had finished his mission and dragged a whole body all the way back to Suna. Which was weird, because carrying a corpse around was annoying at the best of times, and Gaara rarely even bothered to remember to bring back their heads in a recognizable state.

Except... not only was he hauling around a body, it turned out that the body was _still alive_.

He'd _captured_ a missing-nin.

He hadn't even been all that rough with the man, mostly just breaking a few limbs to keep him from running away.

It was-... It was utterly bizarre, that's what it was.

Gaara killed people. He killed lots of people. He didn't go around capturing people using almost entirely humane methods. That just didn't make any sense at all.

And what the hell did it mean, that when they'd asked him about it, he'd just said something about 'kindness being paid onwards'? There wasn't really a good answer for that. So Temari was mightily confused, and she was blaming that Yamanaka-girl for it all.

But-... even so-... Watching Gaara struggle for words whilst trying to figure out how to explain to them the concept of him _not_ 'killing everything that moves'-...

For some reason, the sight of it kind of made her feel like laughing and crying, both.

XXX

Hayate sighed as Ibiki appeared in front of him. He'd known that it was only a matter of time before his old teammate ended up meeting his students, but he would've still appreciated a heads-up from the man.

Which was probably there definitely hadn't been one. Sadistic asshole.

The introductions were however mercifully brief and uncomplicated, because Ibiki relied more on fear than scandal in his sadism, and Team 7 were unusually comfortable with completely ignoring the concept of fear.

Hayate very carefully didn't snicker at how disappointed Ibiki was by it. He knew Ibiki well enough to see it, no matter how good the man had become at hiding his expressions from other people. And drawing attention to it would've been rude, entertainment-value aside.

Then Anko showed up.

Things kind of deteriorated from there, because Anko _loved_ playing up scandal, and even if Team 7 could ignore fear without blinking, they weren't quite ready for scandal.

It didn't help matters that Sakura's eyes had been glued to Anko's chest for the past five minutes. Ever since a certain well-practiced fidgeting habit from the woman revealed that she was definitely not wearing a bra. Bouncy bouncy, and all that.

Hayate nearly rolled his eyes. Those poor kids hadn't even really started in on puberty, and Sakura was already shoving clear signs that there was going to have to be some kind of acclimatization-training in regards to the cleavage being flaunted by female ninja. He wasn't going to lose one of his students just because she was paying too much attention to the wrong places of an enemy.

Anko seemed to be enjoying herself though, even if her 'flaunting the goods' only seemed to work on Sakura.

Hayate wasn't sure if that meant that his other students' sexualities were incompatible with staring at Anko's assets, or if they were just late bloomers as far as those things goes. He wasn't really sure which one he was hoping for – though it did make him curious about Naruto's blatant attraction to that Tenten girl.

He did, however, wish that Anko would cut Sakura some slack before the girl fainted from massive Anko-overload. Carrying his student around the Village like a sack of potatoes would be crass, and if he carried her in some other position and something else happened or someone misunderstood-... It wouldn't be life-ending, but the rumors of him going for a 'younger model' would certainly receive an annoying increase in plausibility in a lot of people's eyes. Which would in turn definitely cause some kind of trouble one of these days.

Then again, he wasn't really holding out any hopes for Anko restraining herself. She was Anko, and she always went all-out in her own brand of gleeful madness.

Pinching his eyes shut as Anko decided to summon one of her many snakes in order to startle Sakura out of her hormone-induced daze, Hayate kind of missed what happened.

One moment, Sakura had been staring at Anko as if she'd been punched in the gut with her entire sexual orientation all at once, the next she was cooing over a snake that Hayate was pretty damn sure was lethally venomous, and which was definitely right in front of her face.

"Oh, you're so pretty!" Sakura smiled reaching out to scratch its head with a perfectly slow and steady hand. The kind of slow that someone might use when petting an Inuzuka-dog. More respectfully careful than actually wary. "I think I saw your species in a book once."

Then she said something unpronounceable that Hayate was just going to assume was the scientific name for the reptile – he'd long since resigned himself to accepting that Sakura was simply better at useless trivia than anyone else alive, excepting maybe her father.

Anko on the other hand looked utterly shell-shocked. It was either the fact that her attempts to mess with the girl's mind had been completely destroyed by a push that ought to have caused her to run fleeing for the hills, or it was the bizarre sight of a genin softly scratching a snake-summon's head without any kind of wariness at all.

It was definitely a strange scene, considering that – even ignoring civilians and their opinions on the matter of most all things venomous – snakes were kind of frowned upon in Konoha after Orochimaru went missing-nin. Sure, the man was dead now, but that didn't mean that the stigma had faded.

Hayate had his eyes open this time however, and he was pretty damn sure he felt his heart stop in horror as Anko's expression of shock morphed into something eerily close to the expression Naruto made whenever Tenten went on one of her long rants about weapons. It looked soft and vulnerable and Hayate was nearly starting to hyperventilate because surely his student couldn't have accidentally seduced Mitarashi Anko on their first meeting, right? That wasn't actually a thing that could happen, right? He was just imagining things, right?

Hayate made a whimpering sound as Anko's lips turned upwards into the softest and most love-struck smile he'd ever seen.

The blond was all-but-dating Gai's student, and the girl had seduced Anko. His life was doomed, because here was no way that Gai and Anko both wouldn't see this as a good reason to strike up conversation with him. He didn't want to deal with all of those crazies on a regular basis.

His only last desperate hope, was that Sasuke was going to turn out completely asexual, so that no _third_ crazy person would crawl out of the woodwork and force him to deal with them. But-... Well, there was probably no hope on that front either, because he was too pretty for there not to be _someone_ who tried to pursue him, regardless of if he returned the feelings or not.

Oh yes. Even if he managed to dodge a specific crazy person, it would probably be compensated for in the sheer mass of fangirls throwing themselves at the last Uchiha, a lot of whom would likely be trying to go through Hayate in order to get to his student.

The moment Team 7 hit puberty as a whole, Hayate was going on vacation that'd last until they were married with children. Or at the very least he'd try to file for retirement.

Sakura continued to coo happily over the snake – with the boys standing a healthy distance away and looking on dubiously – whilst Anko blushed a little bashfully and admitted that she hadn't done a lot of research on her summons in their natural habitat, since hers were trained for combat.

If it wasn't so horrifically creepy to see Anko act bashful at all, Hayate might've thought they made a cute scene. No, beyond that, there was also the age-gap to consider, and-...

And Hayate was _not_ going to put any thought into Mitarashi Anko's sexual preferences. Ever. Even if that might mean risking the mental, physical, and emotional health of his student.

But he _did_ make a note to drop the whole kettle of fish in the lap of Sakura's parents.

They were responsible people, he could totally trust them with this.

Probably.

XXX

Five C-ranks after their first attempt after the invasion, Team 7's luck still hadn't changed. Mainly in that they kept running into a lot more ninja – and weird conspiracies – than what actually made sense, even if every investigation proved that the source of the incidents were unrelated to each other.

The C-ranks were classified as 'attempts' because they were 'attempts at doing a simple C-rank instead of an A-rank'. Which was apparently a lot more difficult than what should be possible.

Hayate still held some hope that this particular C-rank would at least not cause any undue complications, even if there might turn out to be a secret ninja-Village built from shipwrecks or something.

Technically, they were just going to investigate some rumors about ships getting attacked by pirates. Nothing complicated at all, even if there _had_ been some sea-monster rumors, and the townspeople seemed to believe that people were being spirited-away.

Hayate made a face. There was _technically_ still a chance that his hope wasn't misplaced, but he wasn't really feeling it.

"Those bandages, are you injured?" Sasuke frowned at the girl who was their big clue to the people being spirited away, and who lived completely on her own. Though in all honest likelihood, Sasuke was probably more likely to be frowning at the haphazard way the girl's bandages had been wrapped than at the girl herself, because the brat had a tendency towards tunnel-vision.

She responded with a glare, and turned to leave.

So Sasuke tackled her to the floor.

The genin had spent enough time at the Konoha hospital to recognize when an injured individual was avoiding the subject of the extent of their injuries. And he'd been very deliberately trained by the hospital-staff to not let those people out of his sight until they'd submitted to some kind of prodding to make sure that they wouldn't accidentally kill themselves somehow.

After all, even if most every medic-nin were taught to prevent evasive ninja from leaving their sight, Sasuke had had the wonderful advantage of being politically important enough that he could bodily tackle them to the floor and break their legs until they stopped struggling, without being called out on it.

There was a reason that very few ninja ever tried to flee from Sasuke, once they'd already tried doing it before. Apparently – from the reports that kept finding themselves in front of Hayate awaiting his signature – he didn't have time to go looking for them in case they ran away, believing it to be much easier to just maim them a little bit and strap them to a bed somewhere for his own convenience.

Isaribi went down very much like a civilian, even if she managed to shove an elbow into the boy's ribs and shriek loudly enough to make everyone around her worry that their ears might start to bleed.

Sakura very deliberately turned away from the scene in front of her, and instead looked at the blue sky.

Hayate coughed awkwardly, following her example. "Nice weather we're having."

Naruto rolled his eyes from his position next to them. "That's what we're going for? Talking about the weather? Really?"

None of them twitched as the sounds of a struggle continued on behind them. Sasuke could take care of himself, and they'd be damned if they gave him any inclination to believe that they were hindering his work of fixing the mess that were the girl's bandages. And it was entirely possible that 'peeking' on a girl having her bandages forcefully unwrapped was considered 'interfering', so yeah. Not doing it.

Except then everything was suddenly silent, and Hayate felt a shiver run down his spine.

"This." Sasuke's voice was almost soft even as it echoed eerily in the oppressive silence. "Who did this to you?"

"T-That's none of your-!" Isaribi screamed back at him.

"Who?" Sasuke growled out, beginning to leak killing intent. "Who did this to another human being?"

"Let go-!" Isaribi was struggling again.

"Girl." Sasuke sounded absolutely _murderous_. "I don't care who you think you're defending, but whoever did this isn't going to stop with just you. This isn't stable enough, and if they've done _this_ much, they'll try to do more. Probably by dissecting you and keeping you around for spare-parts!" Sasuke took a deep breath, forcefully lowering his voice. "Who did this to you?"

Isaribi seemed to consider it for a moment. "Why should I-?"

"Because if you tell me quickly enough, I might be able to tear them limb from limb before they have a chance to destroy all of their documentation." Sasuke sounded like he was smiling, but none of his teammates were willing to turn around to watch what was probably an utterly terrifying expression. Not when it would also be accompanied with the risk of him getting pissy about them interrupting him. "And once I've made sure that nobody _ever_ tries to pick those experiments back up, I probably won't have to spend years upon years of figuring out what they did to you before I can start working on either stabilizing this, or curing you entirely. Whichever, really."

There was a long moment of silence. "You can... cure me?"

"Helping people is why I became a medic-nin. I'll cure you, or die trying." Sasuke swore through gritted teeth.

And of course a semi-failed human experiment likely meant Orochimaru and his goons, which probably meant a few dozen more ninja that they'd need to wade through.

Hayate coughed again, but it was more like a sigh. "One mission. Just one mission. That's all I ask. One simple C-rank where I won't end up having to explain to the Hokage how we ended up with another A-rank."

Naruto elbowed him in the gut, and hissed out. "Ix-nay on the interrupting-ay."

Sakura put on a strained smile, her eyes not wavering from where she'd originally started to search the completely blue sky for clouds back when Sasuke started. "The weather is definitely nice." She agreed.

Naruto groaned.

XXX

Hayate was kind of amused to realize that Sasuke hadn't actually left Isaribi's side since the moment they'd met.

A little bit relieved too, because at least she seemed like a nice girl. No real connection to anyone of dubious sanity, no truly crazy behavior on her own part, and-... Actually yeah, it was still a bit weird to see Sasuke being nice to someone, but at least he seemed quite restrained in his affection. If he even had a clue about what he was feeling at all.

Hayate might've been able to dump the Talk on the shoulders of Sakura's mother, because she seemed quite capable of giving it, but having been given the Talk was quite different from actually figuring out that you had a crush on someone.

Sexuality and romantic-inclination weren't exactly synonymous after all. And besides that, Sasuke was kind of sheltered on the affection-spectrum after what had happened to his clan.

Shaking that particular thought out of his mind before it brought his mood down, Hayate glanced over at where Sasuke was trying to explain the details of what he was studying to Isaribi.

They looked kind of cute together, and it was a huge relief to see that Sakura and Naruto both seemed to wholeheartedly agree with that assessment. Their team really didn't need any more drama on it than there already was.

Hayate's expression turned thoughtful as he considered that for a moment.

Sakura had lost her older sister at a time before she was even born, and had learned to live with it. Naruto had never had family, but had been welcomed into the Haruno household to the point where he rarely stayed elsewhere. Sasuke had lost his family, and had been welcomed into the Haruno household where he usually slept, even if he still had a tendency to disappear off sometimes just to be on his own.

Kakashi had died, but they'd hardly known him, even if his death had fused their team into a family. The Sandaime had died, but the only one personally invested in him had been Naruto, and he seemed to have bounced back admirably. Sasuke had nearly been kidnapped by one of his senpai at the hospital, but he'd apparently never gotten along with any of those in the first place so there wasn't much of anything emotional happening on that front. Konoha had been invaded, but the ones responsible for that were long since dead.

As it was, Naruto spent most of his time outside of team-interactions with Tenten, Sakura kept 'mysteriously running into' Anko – though from Sakura's recent foray into visiting every dango-stand in the Village, that was likely very much a mutual thing – and Sasuke seemed to have finally calmed down from his original desperate need to learn as much about being a medic-nin as he could. Sasuke might still enjoy spending time learning, but from the reports Hayate had been getting, it was more professional and less the desperate coping-mechanism of a genin who had their jounin-sensei die in front of them.

Hayate hummed thoughtfully. Was it possible that Team 7 had actually developed into an almost entirely drama-free team at some point?

Isaribi started to laugh, and when Hayate glanced over, Sasuke was smiling too.

The rest of Team 7 exchanged glances at how bizarre it was to see Sasuke look happy, but then kind of all just collectively shrugged and continued walking. It was a long way back to Konoha, and it was a pretty nice day for a walk.

XXX

 **A/n: This chapter had to deal with some** _ **heavy**_ **revisions. Mainly in that I added lots of scenes instead of fixing a few sentences and then kind of had to redo a lot of them because of a genre-shift. I think it worked out mostly okay, but yeah, if there's some uncomfortable differences in the mood between the chapters, blame my "the more I write the crackier it gets"-problem.**

 **And that's not even mentioning that I had to rewrite the Epilogue from scratch, so that one will be actually showing up in a** _ **third**_ **chapter (along with an omake of the more cracky version).**


	3. Epilogue and omake

[A Ninja's Parents] Epilogue + omake (crack!epilogue)

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

XXX

Sakura sighed, before putting the book down on the table.

Anko had run away again. And if Sakura hadn't had to deal with this for well over a year now, she might've been upset about it.

Oh, technically, Anko wasn't calling it 'running away', but rather 'going on a mission'. But her girlfriend was a bigger collection of neuroses than Sasuke, so it wasn't as if Sakura had ever really expected anything else.

It'd still hurt when she'd realized that Anko had run away, that first time around. More guilt and worry than abandonment though, and now it felt more like exasperated resignation with a brief stab of annoyance at the likely cause.

Naruto had volunteered to put itching-powder on Kiba's underwear, and Sakura hadn't had the heart to turn down such a honest offer for assistance. Why, just for that, she'd made sure that Kiba was still wearing his underwear when she stripped him and hung him from the Hokage tower by his ankles.

Kurenai had been in charge of deciding when to let him down, seeing as how she was also somewhat annoyed at her student for poking Anko in one of her neuroses. They were, after all, old friends. And for all her bluster, Anko was kind of sensitive about some things.

Mostly, those things seemed centered around things that were kind of triggered by her relationship with Sakura, which was probably a hint as to why Anko kept running away. Abandonment issues, commitment issues, insecurities-... It didn't help that Anko never seemed to be able to assume anything other than the worst of either herself or her surroundings.

Some days, Sakura wondered which one of them was supposed to be the 'angsty teenager' in their relationship.

Sure, Anko had an amazing body and Sakura was quite happy to stare at it for hours as it stretched and flexed during her morning routine, but that didn't mean that Sakura only wanted her for _that_. She wanted to be with Anko because Anko was really soft to cuddle up to, because Anko looked at her like Sakura had recently descended from the heavens with a halo around her head, because Anko could make the dirtiest jokes with a completely straight face if she really wanted to, because Anko got into weird fights with her snake-summons about who got to cuddle with Sakura the most-...

Sakura loved her because Anko was the person she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. Sex or no sex. Sure, it might've been even better with sex, but winning the lottery is no less fantastic just because you have to pay some of it back in taxes. And Anko was very much one-in-a-million, as far as Sakura was concerned.

Of course, no matter how many times she told that to Anko, it was very hard to convince the woman's _feelings_ of that, even if she could understand it logically. Which was why she kept having nervous breakdowns about these kinds of things, and instead of having those breakdowns by spending a few hours crying in the shower like a sensible person, Anko decided to use them as an excuse to run off on missions.

Sakura could admit that ambushing her girlfriend in the shower in order to try and explain why breakdowns in there were better-... well it hadn't been one of her better ideas. Mostly because she'd nearly died from blood-loss at actually seeing Anko naked.

That woman's body was a weapon of mass destruction.

But it was also a two-edged weapon, because – in no small part due to Anko so enjoying teasing people – the people around them kind of assumed that she was 'making use of it'. And she was, Sakura very much enjoyed resting her head in Anko's lap, or hugging her close, or cuddling close as they napped somewhere. It was just that apparently the 'usage' that Sakura was getting from her girlfriend's body wasn't _enough_ in the eyes of some conceited individuals.

And one of these days, Sakura would figure out who the hell came up with the idea that all lovers needed to have sex, and she would travel back in time and murder them.

But even if she was perfectly understanding of why her girlfriend ran away, that didn't make it any less boring to wait for her.

Groaning at the knowledge that she'd run out of books again, Sakura flipped onto her back on the couch. She'd gone to all this effort of breaking into Anko's apartment – not even Anko had the key to Anko's apartment, because apparently keys were security-risks – and she didn't feel like leaving just yet.

She glanced over at the window and the sunset happening beyond it.

She'd been gone for three days now, which probably meant that she'd be arriving any moment-...

The slightest flicker of familiar chakra at the edges of Sakura's senses.

Smiling softly, she raised her hand in greeting as the window slipped open without a sound. "Okaeri, Anko."

Anko stilled, her eyes getting a little bit wet at the edges, visible even from this distance, before she answered in a soft and almost disbelievingly awed voice. "Tadaima, Sakura."

She didn't much care that her girlfriend was covered in dirt and long-dried blood, just motioned her over so that she could hug her properly.

She was home again now. She always came home with time, and Sakura wasn't going to let her ever come back to a home without her in it. She loved her far too much for that.

XXX

Temari still wasn't entirely sure how they'd managed to swing Gaara's nomination to Kazekage. Sure, he'd been the only one even remotely qualified for the position, power-wise, but it was kind of absurd the way that he'd managed to be chosen for it.

Ignoring the fact that her brother had changed beyond their wildest imaginations after meeting Ino, the nomination had mostly come down to petty politics and the simple understanding that with Konoha and Suna allied, their alliance would be a prime target with both of the Villages leaderless.

Konoha had lost their Sandaime, Suna had lost their Yondaime. Konoha elected Akimichi Chouza for Hokage, and Suna elected Gaara for Kazekage. Combined, the two Villages probably made the impression of a reasonable and fairly unimpressive man, with a maddened attack-dog at his beck and call. For the other Villages, that had been enough of a deterrent to not begin trying to press their borders.

That didn't stop in-Village politics from making a nuisance of itself, but Gaara was far too intimidating to challenge directly, and by the time people started to not flinch whenever he glanced their way they'd already gotten used to following his orders. As for Chouza, he'd apparently dodged around some of the wariness from the other clans about favoritism of old alliances by setting up a betrothal between his only son and the Hyuuga clan.

Temari would've probably been a little bit more disturbed by that, if she hadn't heard Ino gush on about how adorable Hinata and Chouji looked. It was possible that they were merely putting on a show, but to be able to deceive a Yamanaka who knew them personally? No, Ino might come off as more than a bit weird sometimes, but she was nearly impossible to lie to.

Temari was pretty sure Kankuro had managed it, once. Something about where he got his war-paint, and him not admitting that it was in the same store that sold make-up for kunoichi. So... probably a lie by omission, and which it was entirely possible that Ino had simply pretended not to realize in order to let her boyfriend's older brother keep a little bit of his dignity intact.

That girl could be scarily perceptive, and if she said that Hinata and Chouji were hesitant and adorable and completely head-over-heels, then Temari was just going to shrug and agree with her. From what she'd seen on her own visits to Konoha, the two of them certainly seemed to get along well, at least.

However, there were other problems on the political side of things, and half of those came down to there being a lot of rebellious grumbling from Ino's father about her dating the Kazekage. Different Villages meant divided loyalties, and it was rather blatantly obvious that it would be Ino moving to Suna, rather than Gaara moving to Konoha, which meant that Ino wouldn't be able to be the Yamanaka heir anymore.

Not that it seemed she cared overly much for the title, and from the way that Ino had started to feel nauseous in the mornings-...

Well, Ino's father would definitely be insisting on that marriage someday soon, and Temari wasn't sure if she was hilariously anticipating it, or wincing at the mere thought of the headache that it would undoubtedly become.

Yamanaka Inoichi was the kind of man who'd definitely cause a fuss about realizing that his daughter had already 'sealed the deal' before actually getting married.

Temari smiled as she sorted through some more paperwork. She was going to be an aunt in a few months.

She could hardly wait.

XXX

Hayate wasn't sure if he should feel outclassed by his student or not. On the one hand, there was the fact that Sasuke had actually asked his girlfriend to marry him – and bought a house for them and their future family, but that was mostly Sasuke being weird – whereas Hayate hadn't really gotten around to even thinking about marriage despite moving in with Yugao a long time ago-... It should leave him feeling inadequate, right? But on the other hand, it was more that Sasuke was a prude than that the young man was a romantic.

Apparently, having been raised as heir to a clan, the idea of 'dallying outside of marriage', regardless of the circumstances of not marrying, was something to frown upon. Which translated into Sasuke asking Isaribi to marry him after basically being together for like a month. Isaribi seemed quite happy with the arrangement, but Hayate knew very well that if he'd asked Yugao that question at that time in _their_ relationship then she would've figured out a way to trip him down a sewer-drain for being annoying.

Different relationships were different. But still-... he couldn't help but get the feeling that he should be worried about losing to Sasuke.

Sure, Naruto's relationship was eerily reminiscent of Hayate's as far as romance went, so it wasn't as if he wasn't aware that it was mostly Sasuke being strange. But it still made him wonder whether or not he ought to be getting around to buying a ring one of these days.

He wanted to spend the rest of his life with Yugao, and she returned his feelings, but he wasn't going to assume that marriage would be on the table until Yugao started to actually drop hints about it. Which she hadn't been doing – Hayate had even gotten help to properly translate Yugao-speak from some of her friends, and she seemed perfectly content with their relationship as it was.

As for his students and their love-lives-... Well, he'd already long since sworn off wondering about what Anko and Sakura were up to, but he'd still been exposed to them enough times to know that they were happy together. Sakura's parents didn't seem to mind it terribly, though they'd apparently had some long words with Anko about their age-difference.

Hayate distinctly remembered Naruto mentioning that there'd been some pointed comments from Sakura about how old her parents had been when they'd had her older sister, before her parents had thrown their hands up in surrender. So Hayate was feeling vaguely proud of his student's ability to resort to blackmail in order to get what she wanted from life.

Beyond that, Hayate also knew that Sakura usually stayed at Anko's apartment, and Isaribi had officially moved in with Sasuke in his house – the one that he'd bought the moment she'd said 'yes' to marrying him, because apparently children should be raised in a house rather than in an apartment, and Sasuke's thought-process was kind of strange. Naruto usually still stayed at the Haruno house, though. Partially because Tenten's teammates weren't the type to approve of 'scandalous' behavior such as them moving in together, but mostly because Tenten didn't seem to mind crashing at the Haruno house when she wanted to spend time with him.

Hayate knew for a fact that Naruto still had an apartment of his own, even if he only visited it a few times a month. But he wasn't entirely sure _why_ the boy insisted on keeping it around, considering that he wasn't even using that place to stash dirty magazines or something – Inuzuka Kiba had done some gleefully enthusiastic investigating on the subject.

So Naruto and Tenten reminded Hayate a lot of himself and Yugao, whereas Sasuke and Isaribi reminded him a lot more about some awkwardly stiff betrothal that kept devolving into acting like newlyweds whenever they thought that nobody was looking, Sakura and Anko though-... Hayate wasn't entirely sure of the intricacies of that mess.

Anko had issues, and Sakura didn't mind them. That was about the extent of thought that Hayate had allowed himself to have about his oldest student and her much older lover.

He also knew that Ibiki had given Sakura a _talk_ about 'keeping Anko happy', because apparently Hayate's old teammate thought of the crazy woman that his student was dating as something like a little sister.

All in all, their relationship seemed a lot more unstable than anything Hayate had experience with, but he had no doubt that they made each other happy, so he sure as hell wasn't going to think too much about it.

Hayate sighed, resigning himself to keeping an ear to the ground to see if Yugao's attitude towards marriage saw any change in the future, knowing that if it did, he'd have to consider her ring-size. He loved her, and it wasn't like he was planning on stopping any time soon.

XXX

The first time Tenten realized that Naruto and his teammates had a tendency to sleep in a pile whilst wearing only their underwear, she'd been kind of startled.

She hadn't really been alone in that though, because it'd only really come up during a dinner between Sakura's parents and everyone else. Or rather, Isaribi, Anko, herself, Sasuke, Sakura, and Naruto. The three teammates and their three girlfriends – to be honest she'd been more than a bit intimidated to realize that Sakura's date for the evening was Mitarashi Anko, because she couldn't really compete with that kind of sex-on-legs even if she wanted to.

The reason it'd come up was that Team 7 had kind of collapsed on the couch, and when Isaribi wondered if it was normal for the three teammates to sleep like that, Sakura's parents had told them about their usual sleeping-arrangements.

Isaribi had been confused, but had kind of shrugged and written it off as weird-ninja-culture-thing. Tenten herself had been thinking about all the jokes she'd be able to crack about Naruto sleeping around with other men, and how hilarious it'd be to see her own teammates' reactions to that. And Anko had looked kind of hesitantly insecure.

It wasn't until nearly a year later that Tenten finally figured out that Anko was both asexual, very insecure about it, and hopelessly in love with Sakura, despite her own commitment-issues. From there, Tenten was willing to guess that Anko had been worried that Sakura would find her inadequate in comparison to the platonic cuddle-time she could have with her teammates.

Not to mention jealous of the fact that Sakura had people whom she was that close to. Anko had Ibiki and Kurenai, and no matter how much they apparently loved the woman like an annoying little sister, they weren't always on the best of terms with her.

Beyond that, neither Tenten, Isaribi, or Anko, were ever invited to sleep in the puppy-pile of Team 7. Mainly, because Naruto couldn't handle the sight of people in their underwear without screeching and running for the hills – he was easily embarrassed, and Tenten was more than willing to tie him up before undressing herself, it was kind of cute how he struggled to not look. But Sasuke was also the kind of guy to spit acid at people for looking at his fiancee, and that included his somewhat acid-resistant teammates. Sakura just always preferred cuddling up with Anko on her lonesome to sleeping with the boys.

Something about Sasuke being an asshole, and Naruto drooling on her. Either way, it meant that though the puppy-pile still made an appearance even after Sasuke went completely crazy and _bought a house_. Usually though, Sasuke spent the nights at the house he shared with Isaribi instead of at the Haruno house.

If Tenten were to guess, she'd label the feelings Sakura's parents had on the subject to be something like the bittersweet realization of their kids moving out. What with Sasuke having his own house and Sakura sleeping over at Anko's apartment more often than not. Even if Naruto still treated the place as his actual home instead of the mostly-empty apartment that he used in order to store his collection of ramen-cups.

It was a very impressive collection, and Tenten understood perfectly well why he needed an entire apartment dedicated to it.

XXX

Tobi stared out over Konoha from his position on his old jounin-sensei's head.

The Moon Eye plan was temporarily on ice, and along with it so were the plans to capture the jinchuuriki. Pein wasn't thrilled about Tobi's decision on the matter, but he obeyed. As he should.

There'd been a new development, and Tobi really needed to investigate it fully before he could move on with the plan.

The Moon Eye plan was a violent kind of plan. Not unnecessarily so, considering that the violence would finally be able to bring peace to the world, but violent nonetheless. People would resist it, and there'd in all likelihood be a war to see it through.

Haruno Kazuto explained it as the psychology of change. Something about how a better tomorrow that was out of their control was always going to be resisted by humanity who wished to see a better tomorrow come into existence slowly. Not because they didn't want that change to happen, but simply based on the idea that they wanted change to come slow enough to the world that they'd be able to change with it. So that they wouldn't be entirely excluded from that better tomorrow that they so dreamed of.

Tobi was pretty sure the man was a hopelessly idealistic optimist, but he was interesting to talk to. Always willing to debate the details and philosophy of a peaceful world and how to get there.

Tobi supposed that Kazuto's trust in the 'future through their children' was largely based on how he himself was a father. But the man had already lost one daughter to the cruelties of the world, and he still seemed capable of believing that the future was slowly but surely growing brighter with every passing day.

Perhaps it was that steady kindness which reminded him so much of Rin, perhaps it was his logical arguments, perhaps it was the random bits of trivia he'd sometimes blurt out in the middle of their discussions-... Tobi felt his face heat up as he remembered Kazuto's gently smiling face, before shaking his head.

Regardless of the reason, Tobi couldn't quite help but to listen. To listen to him speaking about peace coming slowly, carefully taking one step at a time towards a better future. Small sparks of kindness slowly growing into an unstoppable firestorm that could change the world all on its own.

No matter how much time and effort he'd already put into the Moon Eye plan, no matter how many horrible things he'd already committed himself to for the sake of a peaceful world, Tobi couldn't help but think that the world Kazuto dreamed of with such a kindhearted smile would be a beautiful world to see for himself.

So... just for now, he'd wait a little bit longer.

XXX

 **A/n: The End.**

 **That's right folks, the whole Big Bad's plans are completely derailed, because Tobi is tsundere for Kazuto, and they have long debates over these kinds of things whilst Kazuto is out shopping for groceries and stuff.**

 **Also, as for Yui and Kazuto and Asuna? As far as everyone knows, they're her biological parents (she looks similar enough, and they've never claimed otherwise), which would mean that from all appearances, Asuna gave birth to Yui when she was like ten years old, with Kazuto being eight. As in, they're ridiculously young parents, and probably don't have a lot of ground to stand on about at what age people are allowed to claim adulthood (and telling Sakura, after all this time, that Yui was adopted in order to stop her relationship with Anko would only be shooting themselves in the foot).**

 **This is a very different epilogue than the one I'd originally written. Mainly because the unintentional genre-shift from the second chapter took the original epilogue into the cracky territory of "Sakura the oblivious harem lead", which was hilarious but kind of not at all suitable for the story.**

 **This crack!epilogue is made available to you by the omakes below. Enjoy, and thank you all for your reviews.**

XXX

XXX

(Omake)

WARNING: Crack ahead

XXX

(Pre-Epilogue)

XXX

Whilst Hayate generally stayed away from Naruto's practices with Tenten, that didn't mean he could entirely ignore them. Especially when he needed to fetch Naruto for something.

Still, at least the two genin were usually pretty easy to find. All he had to do was follow the sounds of clashing steel, and the high-pitched shrieks of terror. There was sometimes also mad cackling, but only if Tenten was either in a very good mood, or very annoyed.

To be honest, the sheer sadistic glee that Tenten sometimes displayed was nearly as big a contributor to Hayate staying the hell away from her practices with Naruto, as the knowledge that Gai had taken to hiding in the bushes in order to supervise them.

Tenten's attitude actually reminded him eerily of Yugao sometimes, except with less attraction from his side and a lot more creepiness. Though if that meant that Naruto had somehow inherited his taste in women was anyone's guess. He certainly seemed to think that a girl trying to stab him in the face was a girl worth staring at whenever she bent over to pick up her weapons.

Not that Hayate was _ever_ going to bring that up in conversation, because he really didn't need to know these things.

"I'm just going to nick his vital organs a little!" Tenten roared.

"What about my non-vital organs?" Naruto's voice drifted hesitantly to Hayate's ears.

"They'd have it coming!" Tenten answered.

Peeking around a tree, Hayate saw that Gai was keeping Tenten restrained as she desperately tried to wriggle out of his grip and attack Naruto.

Considering that Naruto wasn't running, and was instead looking utterly confused, Hayate decided that perhaps he could-...

"Ah, Hayate-san!" Gai boomed his way.

Hayate hung his head, surrendering to the inevitable of involving himself in a fight between two hormonal teenagers. "Yo." He put on a polite smile. "I kind of needed to fetch Naruto-kun, but is something the matter?"

Hayate had long since learned to be unfailingly polite with Gai. The man didn't need any reminders of Kakashi's death by him trying to brush him off, and besides that Hayate didn't really want to risk Gai putting any focus on him beyond 'polite sensei to my own student's sparring-partner'. Anything beyond that could be dangerous, because then he might actually have to spend time with him, and that'd be awful on multiple levels.

"My name isn't 'Bun-chan'!" Tenten yelled, nearly spitting the nickname at Naruto, and thus helpfully explaining the current problem.

Naruto visibly flinched backwards, but apparently that didn't stop him from making it worse. "How about 'Bun-sensei'?"

Hayate sighed as Tenten's struggles increased with a new and even more murderous roar.

It was nice to see that his student had seemingly recovered from losing both a teacher and the closest thing he had to a grandfather. But that didn't make it any less pleasant for Hayate to realize that today was going to be one of those days.

XXX

"Naruto!" Kiba skidded to a stop next to them. "Since when is Sasuke nice to anyone?!"

Naruto glanced over at the other boy, looking utterly confused. "Huh?"

Sakura frowned, a little bit worried. "Are you okay, Kiba-kun? Do you have a fever or something?" She reached over and placed her hand on his forehead, then leaned her own forehead on the other side of her hand to check his temperature properly.

Kiba shrieked a little, flailed his arms, turned red, and hurriedly took a few steps back. "W-What the hell are you doing?!"

Sakura tilted her head, a little bit confused at the extreme reaction. "Checking your temperature."

It was the same kind of thing she'd do with Ino or Naruto or Sasuke. Except part of the temperature-test in regards to Sasuke was whether or not he'd succeed in punching her for invading his personal space-... Ah. Right. She wasn't really close enough to Kiba for that kind of behavior. Oops.

"Ah, sorry. I didn't think." Sakura admitted sheepishly.

"Whatever! What's this about Sasuke being nice?!" Naruto demanded.

Kiba startled away from staring at her, and turned back to Naruto. "Right. Yeah! I saw him at the hospital talking to some girl with bandages! And he didn't even threaten to hurt her for walking around injured or anything!"

"Oh." Naruto deflated. "That's just Isaribi-chan. She doesn't count."

Sakura made a face. "Don't say it like that, Naruto. It sounds bad."

"But she doesn't!" Naruto whined. "He's always nice to her, so she doesn't count!"

Kiba made a really weird expression. "Wait, Sasuke has a crush?"

Sakura opened her mouth, closed it again, shared a glance with Naruto, and then they both shrugged in unison.

Sasuke was fucking weird.

XXX

(Epilogue)

XXX

"You're pregnant." Sasuke said bluntly.

"Wha-?" Ino stared at him with wide eyes.

Sasuke glanced back at her. "It's a thing that happens when people go at it like rabbits." He explained sarcastically.

Ino's face turned completely red. "We're not-!"

"Clearly, you are." Sasuke rejected her argument, waving the results in her general direction. "Which is a political nightmare, I'm sure." He added in a voice that clearly meant that there would be no sympathy to be found with him.

Ino made a small whimpering noise. "Umm... can you keep a secret?"

Sasuke snorted a laugh. "There's a thing called patient-confidentiality, yes. But if your father charges in here to ask 'how', I'm going to tell him that you've been having wild exhibitionistic beach-sex without the water-front."

Ino opened her mouth, then closed it again, before making an annoyed noise. "You're a horrible person."

"It's one of my many virtues." Sasuke agreed absently.

Frowning at him, Ino finally snorted a laugh. "You're just lucky Isaribi-chan is too nice for her own good, or she would've dumped your ass ages ago."

"So you keep saying." Sasuke hummed, not paying attention.

Shaking her head at the annoying medic-nin, Ino turned her attention back to the important subject, mainly that he wouldn't tell her dad that she was pregnant. Which was mostly important because they were allies with Suna and it'd be a terrible shame for her father to cause an international incident by attempting to assassinate the Kazekage in public. "So I'm not going to have to blackmail you into keeping this quiet?"

Sasuke frowned. "You have blackmail on me?"

Ino grinned, somewhat sickly as she kept her hand on her stomach. "Isaribi-chan isn't a very good liar."

Sasuke glared back at her. "Neither is Chouji."

Ino made a face, realizing that he could probably match any blackmail she had on him tenfold. Chouji was such a goddamn gossip. "Fine fine."

And with another sigh, the heir to the Yamanaka clan and the future mother of the Kazekage's children made her way out through Sasuke's door.

Political nightmare indeed.

XXX

Sakura smiled at Lee. It was kind of hilarious the way he'd flirt with almost anyone. Though probably nowhere near as entertaining as the fact that Kiba and him would almost always end up trying to out-flirt each other.

Glancing over to where Hinata and Chouji were talking softly under the tree, Sakura wondered again how in the world she'd ended up being the only girl of the Konoha 12 who was still single.

Ino spent most of her time either in Suna or on missions, Tenten spent most of her time picking fights with Naruto and then beating him like a drum until he was exhausted enough to drag off to some secret corner, and Hinata was engaged to the Akimichi heir.

It'd really come as a surprise to most of them to see those two engaged, but they appeared quite happy with each other, even if it was something that their parents had originally arranged in order to keep the political climate stable somehow. Though nobody had ever bothered to inform Sakura that their political climate had been _unstable_ , so it was either a preventive measure or someone was covering something up. Probably a bit of both, but it was hard to say in a ninja Village.

Regardless, it felt a bit weird that she was the only one of her classmates who were single. Sure, a large portion of the reason why Kiba and Lee were flirting with her was purely because she wasn't spoken for – or willing to shove a yard of razor-wire down their throats for being annoying – but she didn't think that she was _unattractive_. So it was still a bit weird to having basically been single forever.

It wasn't even that she was a powerful kunoichi, because she'd seen Naruto following around Tenten like a pathetically love-struck puppy. Even when she bombarded him with sharp weapons of all kinds and cackled about it. Though admittedly, there was the distinct possibility that much of that stemmed from Naruto having some kind of masochistic tendencies, but Sakura didn't like thinking about her teammates' sex-lives.

Beyond that, sure, maybe her closeness to Naruto and Sasuke could be intimidating, but they were more like brothers than anything else. Everyone could see that, considering how both of them were dating different girls. And how Sasuke had _finally_ asked Isaribi to marry him, after nearly a year of everyone having to get used to dealing with their awkwardly romantic moments. Though he _had_ moved disturbingly fast to marriage once they'd actually started dating.

Sakura wondered briefly if her being single might be because her brothers were overprotective little shits who were going behind her back to scare off potential suitors, before dismissing the thought with the realization that Sasuke would've been up-front about it, just for the sake of being an asshole.

Then again, she _was_ technically surrounded by a lot of people who liked to flirt with anything that moved, so it might be due to that. Not that she could understand why anyone would find harmless stuff like that to be intimidating. It wasn't like any of them were being serious.

Lee liked cute girls, Kiba liked any girl who could swing their hips, Ayame liked people who actually paid for their ramen, and Anko liked anything that bled. As for the other two, well Kankuro was using her for practicing talking with 'the girl of his dreams' – whom Sakura wasn't sure if he'd met and been unable to talk to, or hadn't met but wanted to be absurdly prepared for – because he was a hopeless romantic. And Neji was mostly using her as a sounding-board for figuring out how to compliment girls without sounding like a total dick – it was a work in progress.

So it stood to reason that Sakura always ended up being flirted with, even if it wasn't anything serious.

Not that she terribly minded Ayame giving her extra helpings of ramen or the way the older woman had a tendency to drop things to the floor and then bend down to pick them up very slowly, or Lee and Kiba's hilarious squabbling, or the way that Anko would bounce on her heels whilst not wearing a bra, or having Kankuro write her flattering letters for practice, or even Neji's sometimes adorably awkward attempts to sound like a reasonable human being.

She still wasn't sure why everyone else kept calling her an 'oblivious heart-breaker', but it was probably some kind of inside-joke.

XXX

It was kind of amazing how far his three socially awkward students had come.

One was engaged to be married to the cute girl whom he'd once upon a time tackled to the ground because he'd thought she was injured. Another had ended up dating the girl he'd been crushing on ever since the first time she'd filled a training ground with weapons in under a minute. And the third was an utterly oblivious heart-breaker who still hadn't noticed that the 'flirts' around her were _only flirting with her_. With the obvious exception of Anko, who didn't flirt with other people _any longer_ , because Sakura had smiled at her at some point and now she was stalking his oldest student like an overly affectionate puppy.

A scantly clad puppy. Which was a little bit weird considering the age-gap, but nobody really wanted to try commenting on Anko's sexual preferences any more than they wanted to spend extended amounts of time around Gai.

Hayate wasn't sure if it was hilarious or sad, watching the real-life harem lead smiling disarmingly at the people around her and having them melt into a giggly goo. Not that it helped that both of her idiot-brothers had a tendency towards the overprotective side of things, or that said harem-members were still fighting amongst themselves over who got to spend time with her.

But at least he wasn't Asuma-senpai, having to juggle the son of the Hokage and the girlfriend of the Kazekage _and_ fatherhood, all at once. Poor bastard.

Instead, he just had to deal with him and Yugao being invited to the Haruno family's house every now and then. Which wasn't really a bad thing, considering how Asuna was an amazing chef, and there was usually some kind of entertainment involved. Mainly dealing with how the various people of Sakura's harem kept trying to get an invite to the occasion without letting anyone else take part – usually it resulted in a few of them being invited at once, which always caused some interesting fireworks. It was like watching a train-wreck.

Considering a few of the stories that Sakura's parents would tell him, she'd definitely inherited her charm from her father.

But still... on the subject of relationships, one of these days he really should figure out how to give Yugao that damnable ring that he'd been carrying around in his pocket for the last year-and-a-half.

If it weren't for the fact that Sasuke's proposal had been absurdly successful considering the effort put into it, then Hayate would've really considered asking for advice. It took a special kind of insanity to drag the girl to a jeweler-shop and ask her to pick a ring her size because he had shit to do and couldn't be bothered with it – hell, he hadn't even actually asked the question so much as Isaribi had figured it out on her own and agreed on the spot.

Hayate shook his head and sighed. Maybe he should just leave the ring somewhere for her to find and hope for the best? But that sounded an awful lot like something Neji would've tried, and that poor kid was still very much single, even if that could at least be partially blamed on Sakura's ridiculous level of obliviousness.

XXX

"I like you!"

Sakura blinked and glanced up from her reading to see Kankuro standing in front of her. His face was red, he was fidgeting, and he had such an earnest expression on his face that Sakura was a little bit startled by it.

"I know I'm not-..." He trailed off, frustrated. "I'm not really all that good looking, and I can be kind of an idiot, but I love you!"

Sakura felt her heart swell a little, and she smiled at him. "That was really good, Kankuro."

Kankuro opened his clenched eyes, staring at her with heartfelt relief.

"There was lots of passion in that. You're gonna charm the pants off of her for sure!" Sakura praised him honestly, still feeling a little bit moved at Kankuro trusting her enough to practice these kinds of things on her first.

Kankuro nearly burst into tears, he was so relieved, but then Lee and Neji appeared out of seemingly nowhere and started to drag him away.

"Sorry to interrupt, Sakura-chan, but Kankuro-san is late for his Youthful departure!" Lee smiled cheerfully at her as he waved, even if it looked a bit strained underneath the apparent hurry they were in. "But don't worry, we'll escort him to the gate with all due haste!"

A little bit stunned by the boys' rapid words and the fact that they were really already hurrying out of sight, dragging a flailing Kankuro after them in the dirt, Sakura waved after them in a bit of a daze.

Kankuro must've realized that writing letters was very different from talking to someone in person, and had probably been trying to figure out how to best phrase it all this time. No wonder he'd been stammering and walking into walls whenever she talked with him. But still, whoever Kankuro's dream girl was, she was really quite lucky to have someone so dedicated to making their 'first meeting' flawless.

Making a face to herself, Sakura admitted that she still thought it was a bit silly to wait for the confession until he was actually supposed to be leaving to go back to Suna, since it meant she didn't really have time to give him a lot of feedback on it, nor would he really have time to fix any problems she pointed out before trying again. But maybe he'd just been caught up in talking to everyone else too, since they were all really interested in talking with the Suna-nin about various things?

Sakura finally dismissed those thoughts with a shake of her head and returned to her book.

She'd never understand boys.

XXX

Sasuke sighed as the two idiots staggered in. "What is it this time?"

Neji lifted an unusually colored arm, face pale but his expression neutrally resigned. "Poison."

Rolling his eyes at them, Sasuke reached for his gear. "Can't you people go five minutes without trying to kill each other?"

Lee made a noise of protest, but it looked like his jaw had been broken, so it wasn't a very articulate one. Neji just bristled like always. "We were only making sure he got to the gate in time."

Sasuke knew exactly how much time Kankuro had had available. Namely, they were supposed to leave by evening, not by early morning. But he also knew that trying to argue the point would be completely useless.

The competition within Sakura's harem was fierce.

Still, Sasuke frowned as he ran a diagnostic on Neji's arm – Lee, and the world around him, could survive without being able to talk for a while longer. "Pretty sure a lot of people have had things to say about your _enthusiasm_. And it seems it's about time for another one, because I'm pretty sure this was meant to be lethal."

Both of the idiots attempt to make innocent faces, probably because they wanted Kankuro to take the fall for escalating to lethal force. Despite the blatant fact that _everyone_ in Sakura's harem kind of did that whenever they felt like it, which was damn near all the time. No matter how many stern talks their surroundings had with them.

"We'd never use lethal force on Ayame." Neji tried to defend himself.

Sasuke raised an eyebrow at the Hyuuga. "Did you or did you not hog-tie her and throw her over the wall of Konoha?"

Lee fidgeted uncomfortably, having never been even a half-decent liar. Neji just looked a little bit more constipated than usual.

"She started it." Neji said mulishly.

"Yes yes, I've heard it before. She deliberately poisoned your food, served Sakura _good_ alcohol – I mean, that stuff was seriously expensive, you know? – and then flashed my perverted teammate a whole lot." Sasuke tried to recall the series of events that had led to that particular trip to the hospital.

Naruto had taken great offense at having Ichiraku's attacked, though after everyone had calmed down a bit and Ayame been forced to confess to ruining good ramen-... Naruto had learned to deal with it. Grudgingly.

In hindsight, Sasuke shouldn't have made that statement directly after having healed Lee's jaw. It put him right next to the man's mouth.

"Sakura-chan isn't a pervert!" Lee exclaimed straight into Sasuke's ear, sounding horrified at the accusation.

Sasuke rubbed his ear and glared at him, but very deliberately didn't break his wind-pipe in retaliation – he'd never attack a patient that wasn't resisting treatment. "Please, that girl couldn't be kept from staring _in a temple_." Which had made that mission really awkward, because there'd been a lot of men without shirts, and she'd had issues focusing on their actual enemies.

He loved her dearly, but Sakura was very much a hopeless case of hormones. Which she thankfully didn't aim Isaribi's nor Tenten's way, because apparently they'd landed themselves deep enough into 'family'-territory that she could change in the same room as them without drooling.

It would've been annoying to have to smack the closest thing he had to a sister whenever his fiancee wore something revealing. If Isaribi wanted to wear something revealing, Sasuke wanted to be able to dedicate his full attention to watching her wear it. Or possibly plotting the closest route to the nearest place where he could help her with _not_ wearing it.

Still, despite the hopelessness of Sakura's sex-drive, she'd somehow managed to also be absolutely clueless about people actually trying to get into her pants. So she just stared, longingly. And drooled.

Which made people assume that she was either a horrible deviant or an innocent princess, even though both assumptions were wrong. Sakura was simply a clueless pervert who was attracted to everything that moved.

One of these days, Sasuke was sure he'd catch her staring dazedly after a fruit rolling downhill, with wanton lust in her eyes.

XXX


End file.
